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🇬🇷 Greece /Economy & Trade

Why not an investment tax too?

From Kathimerini · () Greek

Translated from Greek and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Sources not specified Context piece
  • The commentary says Greece’s central economic challenge is to increase domestic wealth rather than focus first on redistribution.
  • Greek GDP per capita has risen faster than the European average but remains at 68.4% of that average, compared with 237% in Ireland.
  • It argues that raising dividend taxes could weaken Greece’s investment appeal while bureaucracy, licensing, legal complexity and slow justice remain unresolved.

Why are Greek politicians not proposing solutions for the country’s most important question, where new growth will come from? That is the challenge raised by this commentary as Greece enters a long pre-election period.

The argument is that politicians are still debating how to distribute wealth that falls well below the level of the rest of Europe. They should first focus on expanding the domestic economy, increasing the wealth produced in Greece and raising net incomes before fighting over redistribution.

Greek GDP per capita has grown faster than the European average in recent years, but not enough to catch up. It stands at 68.4% of the European average, while the comparable figure for Ireland reaches 237%. That gap, the commentary says, should define the country’s goal rather than comparisons over whether Bulgaria is ahead or behind Greece.

The article criticizes politicians for responding to financial hardship by looking for ways to redistribute what already exists. It says Greece is not yet at the stage where it can treat tax debates as a matter of luxury or domestic theoretical argument. Dividend tax may be low, but the piece argues that this reflects Greece’s need to offer investors at least one competitive advantage.

With a 5% dividend tax and a 22% corporate tax, Greece still has some of the highest business tax rates in its region, the commentary says. Raising dividend tax would be difficult to justify while bureaucracy, licensing problems, legal complexity and slow justice remain unresolved, unless Greece has already solved its other investment obstacles or can rely on the size of its market alone.

The article ends with a deliberately sarcastic warning: if convergence with Europe is no longer the goal, Greece could raise the dividend tax and add an “investment tax” alongside its “patriotic” tax, so investors might “appreciate” the country more as a destination.

The issue is not how to distribute something that falls far short of the rest of Europe, but how to increase domestic wealth.

· Unnamed commentatorThe description states the commentary’s central argument about Greece’s economic priorities.
About this summary

Originally published by Kathimerini in Greek. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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