“This is not a battle against the law, it is a battle for survival small and medium sized that is, of Greek society, and this is because 90% of small and medium-sized businesses are family businesses,” said the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, Yannis Chatzitheodosiou, speaking on the Nautemporiki channel and on the “In Business” program with Maria Smilidou and Pavlos Pantazopoulos, to the appeal of all SME operators and of freelancers in the CoE on June 17, against the introduction of presumed taxable profit.
The timing of the appeal is not accidental, as several constitutionalists have already spoken out about the unconstitutionality of the law.
In particular, speaking on the issue of unconstitutionality, Mr. Hadzitheodosiou explained that “The law is said to combat tax evasion, but it imposes a presumptive tax on an arbitrary income of yours, 10,920 euros, without examining the real income. However, this is not the important thing. The law also says something else: when there are salary increases, companies’ income levels also increase. But you know, what we do is called “business”, which has good and bad years, mistakes or good decisions by the entrepreneur. What the government supports is called a “successful business”, not a “business”. It is not certain that a company will always make a profit. The law therefore presupposes that the company will always have profits and even increasing ones”…
“I tell you that some people avoid taxes is true and we said that tax evasion should be clamped down… but in this particular case the government does not intend to clamp down on tax evasion… the arbitrary assessment of income essentially abolishes the liberal economy. There is no equivalent measure in Europe.”