As if it was not enough that supermarket prices get higher each and every week, now new Value Added Tax hikes will skyrocket thousands of products – food items not excluded – and services making daily life even more expensive. According to a proposal made by the Greek government to creditors, the high V.A.T. of 23% will go even higher to 24%.
The new hike will be imposed as of 1. July 2016 and are expected to bring additional 400-500 million euro per year into the state cash registers.
The VAT hike will affect packaged food items like pasta, rice, coffee, flour, chocolate and other as well as beverages and juices.
Did you know that Olives have 23% V.A.T.?Because it is proceeded food…
Already in summer 2015, processed food and packaged food items skyrocketed when the European creditors imposed a 10% VAT-hike, i.e. from 13% to 23%, and households saw their wallets empty in zero time and thus for less products.
Of course, also all household goods will go up, Also affected from 24% will be food services like restaurants, catering etc, public transport and taxi fares, services by writers, composers and other artists, home repairs, flowers and plants, sewage services, and pet food. I suppose, also all other items essential for households like detergents, toiletries and other stuff that has now 23% VAT will go Up! Up! Up! as well as clothes, shoes and everything else that has now 23% VAT.
The “measure” is considered as an “equivalent measure” that will balance last year’s exception of V.A.T for private schools and gambling, will avoid VAT-hikes in water and electricity bills and thus fill a major gap of 1% of GDP for the years 2017 and 2018.
Tomato plant 23% ⇒ 24%, fresh tomato in open market or supermarket 13%, fresh but packed fresh tomato & canned tomatoes 23% ⇒ 24%
The daily life for Greeks is soon to be more expensive anyway, as extra fees are expected to be imposed in mobile communication, fuel, natural gas and whatever else people use to avoid living in the famous Stone Age.
Indirect taxes are despicable, anyway, as they affect everyone independently of whether one has the ability to pay or not. Indirect taxes and their hikes once per year in food items, where average wages start at 250-350 euro for part-times and go up 600-800 euro for full time jobs are 3 times despicable!
Not without my Greek salad!
“Direct or indirect taxes as Equivalent Measure” is the magic formula for all governments of every possible color and ideology since 2010, to hide their reluctance to proceed with “expenditure cuts”. And then these “expenditure cutes” are applied, they are always in the wrong sector: cuts in the Health instead of Defense, over ngiht close down of State Broadcaster ERT instead of getting rid of thousands lazy civil servants.
PS thank Goodness, I don’t like pasta and rice, but I buy fresh potatoes (13%) and bread (13% – unless packed in supermarket 23%)
when do you think will this government finally get its well deserved kick in the A….? Indirect taxes are the most unsocial and unfair tax ever.
How can this Tspiras still take a look in the mirrow every morning without throwing up?
he shaves himself without a mirror
:-)))))
and when the government falls he will flee the country at night in an oligarch private jet and be awarded with an international bureaucrat job… in Switzerland…or New York…or Brussels…
Raise tax on cigarettes and cigars to the same levels as the UK. In the UK a pack of 20 cigarettes costs around 9 Euros, here they cost around 3.50 Euros. Not only would this raise millions in tax without affecting basic foodstuffs but it might encourage people to give up and save the lives to thousands. Nobody needs to smoke, so tax it heavily!
allegedly creditors didn’t want tax hike iin cigarettes (they were afraid people would stop smoking , therfe fore they’d lose revenues lol)
The government smokes thank God.
And as for not needing to smoke, speak for yourself.
Saving lives only will cost society more in social, medical and pension costs. Don’t you know, they want you to die young. Work hard, pay taxes and premiums but die young.
This must be the deep hidden reason why since Monday 2.2 million people that were kicked out from social insurance can now go see a doctor, most of them for the 1st time in years… and I’m sure about who will call this “communism” again… so far the “lenders”-medias haven’t recognized it…
From conversations I have had with friends, colleagues and acquaintances, it’s clear a great deal of people abroad don’t realize that many of the absurdities we are witnessing in Greece today (the ridiculously low tax level on cigarettes being just one) are being imposed on a cowed Greek government by a tone- and culture-deaf coterie of European bureaucrats who are only obsessed with one thing: making sure Greece generates enough cash to pay back the principal and the interest on the loans it was forced to accept.
This is not meant to absolve the Greek government of any and all responsibility for the current situation. Nor is it turn a blind eye to the severe incompetence and amateurism of the current and past Greek governments. It’s simply meant to underscore the fact that the “Institutions” are far from blameless for creating the daily scenes worthy of the Theater of The Absurd Greece is now experiencing.
You’re right.
But the”government” are also well paid and protected quislings, a fifth column inside the country. The willing executioners.
It was ever thus since Greece has, since Capodistrias’ murder, been nonstop the pawn of the Great Powers due to geographic position.
Quislings is right. But the situation is hopeless. What do we have waiting in the wings? Mitsotakis. The second-rate, contemptible offshoot of one of the three or four families that have treated Greece like their own personal colony and who is champing at the bit to “leave his mark.” It’s enough to make you throw up.
Hello?? Does this government not realize that this will put even more below the poverty line- the very same they sought to promise ‘Elpida” to? It beggars belief and, yet again, it is left for the lower income groups to shoulder the burden. Sad? Almost criminal .
dear Hills, they understand perfectly well and are benefitting mightily from it. Meanwhile they cry crocodile tears and wail “the devil made me do it!!!” You see, we are supposed to be sorry for them!
VAT is an unfair tax that will hit the poorest and middle classes the hardest. It will only these people’s spending power and will of all companies hit the SME the hardest.