Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras announced Saturday in his annual state of the economy speech in Thessalonikito, cuts to unpopular taxes introduced at the height of Greece’s debt crisis:
- said a heating oil consumption tax would be cut by 30 percent and a “solidarity tax” would also be reduced
- “This is the year that Greece has started to stand on its own feet”
- “It is still wounded, yes. But its wounds are healing and it is looking to the future”
- Samaras has pushed EU and IMF lenders to start rolling back austerity demands to help kickstart growth and preserve Greece’s fragile political stability
- Samaras said details of the tax cuts would be presented in the draft budget when it is announced in October
- He also said he was working on a taxation “road map”, in which the top rate of income tax would be cut in stages to 32 percent from 42 percent and the corporate tax rate reduced to 15 percent from 26 percent. A deeply unpopular property tax would also be reduced, he said, without providing any details.
More here: Greek PM announces cuts to crisis-era taxes
