Greece to miss its tax reform targets in 2012

The heavily indebted Greece will miss tax reform goals set for this year, as the country cannot collect enough taxes from evaders, the European Union and International Monetary Fund said earlier this week. Athens has collected only a half of the tax debts and conducted even less than a half of the audits it was supposed to conduct under the targets set by the international lenders. Greek authorities conducted 440 checks on suspected wealthy tax evaders out of 1,300 targeted, and collected only 1.2 billion euros in tax, from 2 billion necessary. In order to get another tranche from lenders, Greek parliament is expected to pass a new tax law, which is aimed to raise about 2.5 billion euros over the next two years.

"Considerable arrears remain on the books-53 billion euros ($69.9 billion)-of which most likely 15 to 20% could be paid."