Sales Slips and Taxes

         Taxes (φ ό ρ ο υ ς ) is probably the most feared word in the Greek language. Greeks historically have had an aversion to paying any kind of tax, for what ever purpose, and have gone to great lengths in avoiding them. With the economic depression still going on (as this is 2012), the current Greek government in it’s ongoing efforts to raise revenues, not only tightened  tax laws, but also introduced a plethora of new taxes to be imposed on the population. This has led the Greeks to believe that the last several elected governments have been nothing more than a kleptocracy rather than a democracy, each one more corrupt than the last, bolstered by years of cronyism.

With the introduction of the new income tax came new challenges for the Greek taxpayer in trying to circumvent this hated legislation. According to the new tax a deduction would be given based on the kinds and amount of sales receipts one has accumulated during the year. Consequently, taxes are reduced correspondingly based on the tax bracket one finds himself in. So, throughout the year everyone is squirreling away sales receipts from a few Euro cents to mega Euro purchases. This has led to intriguing phenomena in which people are trading sales slips, as I remember trading baseball cards as a kid. “I’ll give you two of my apparel receipts for one of your gas receipts.” Or if a relative hasn't reached his or her maximum deductions, other family members may pitch in and donate some of their sales slips. What you can find in every household is a large shoe box brimming full of sales receipts that have to be kept for a year. If one has an accountant, then he has to safely store these receipts for all his clients.

During the summer of 2012, as we started a huge kitchen renovation project, I too started to accumulate large quantities of sales slips that I consciously hoarded in a size 44 shoe box. Then it

occurred to me, since sales receipts were such a valuable commodity and in high demand, maybe I could make some extra money and auction them to the highest bidder. It was a fleeting thought, because I knew deep inside I would just give them away. Sure enough, by the end of the summer my niece wound up with my size 44 shoe box packed full of sales receipts, everything from a bag of pistachios to a new kitchen sink. So, maybe this just proves what the arch conservative, Barry Goldwater once said about income taxes, “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.”