D.G. Dimitrakopoulos & A. G. Passas, The reform of the public revenue administration in Greece: re-building the ship during the storm?

Summary 

The conclusion that we have drawn from this analysis is that this is a prima facie case of the impact of vincolo esterno in the sense that the establishment of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) would not have taken place in the absence of the MoUs and the conditions that they entailed. The newly-established authority has far greater functional independence as well as financial and administrative autonomy than its predecessors and is much more akin to the British (HMRC) and Swedish institutions than any other EU member state. It has the power to:

    (a) in terms of functional independence

• interpret all relevant applicable tax laws,
• determine its own strategic and operational plans, including goal-setting and performance indicators,
• oversee, coordinate, monitor and assess the operation of all relevant units in relation to the strategic and operational objectives defined in its own plans,
• plan tax, customs and other relevant controls for the monitoring of all relevant tax laws,
• assess and prioritise any control requests that it receives, 
• combat tax evasion, smuggling, illicit trade, tax fraud, 
• combat corruption, lack of transparency, inefficiency, low productivity and low quality service provision encountered in public revenue, custom, and other relevant services
• propose legislative and other measures aiming to improve tax and customs compliance, including in relation to speeding up the collection of public revenue
• offer its opinion on draft legislation that relates to its domain of responsibility,
• take any other action that its duties require.

(b) In terms of administrative and financial autonomy, it has the power to

• organise its own services and manage all resources available to it,
• shape and manage its own budget autonomy, 
• enjoys a significant degree of protection under the new law
• develop, update, maintain (or purchase) and utilise the IT system that it needs in the context of a broader IT and e-government strategy.

Second, we have concluded that increasing the autonomy of the country's public revenue institutions is a step in the right direction because it can address at least some of the root causes of the country's endemic problems in collecting taxes. This does not mean that it is a central or indeed the only factor behind the significant recent improvement in tax collection. This is a rather complex matter that requires further research, partly because of the impact of capital controls and the dramatic increase in the use of cards for payments.

Third, the process of change did not have to go as far as it did; rather increasing the lenders but the process went further simply because key decisions of Greek governments undermined their credibility at crucial points of the reform process. In other words, though the logic of conditionality is thought to involve diktats that are issued by the lenders and are obeyed by the recipient country, in this case the weaker party ended up unintentionally shaping the final outcome.

Fourth, the reform is likely to have created (in line with the logic of unintended consequences that characterizes processes of institutional change) a new problem: the IAPR is currently accountable to parliament but the Greek parliament is not by virtue of its own internal but also the broader Greek political culture likely to be able and willing to perform this role (see the section on future research).

The full report