Investigators visited this quaint island not far from Athens—a destination for many wealthy Greek and foreign vacationers who often arrive on sleek yachts—during a summer of widespread financial checks on establishments catering to tourists. At the fish restaurant Psaropoula, on the island’s main harbor, police allegedly observed servers fail to
give proper receipts, which, for restaurants, specify a recently elevated value-added tax of 23%.
The police attempted to take Sevasti Mavrommatis, a 54-year-old owner, into custody for a flagrant violation of tax law. Ms. Mavrommatis’s
blood pressure surged, she later recalled. She began to tremble and fainted, she said. “I didn’t kill anyone,” she said. “Why put me in jail with the criminals?”
Her 29-year-old son, Ilias, who waits tables at the restaurant, said he told police to take him instead. The mother went to an island hospital. Authorities apprehended the son.
Word spread quickly among the island’s few thousand residents. Locals besieged the small local police station, cutting off electricity and hurling firecrackers and a flare into its courtyard from nearby rooftops, witnesses said. “Let Ilias go!” some shouted.
Police and their detainee remained shut inside most of the night, witnesses say, until reinforcements arrived to escort Mr. Mavrommatis to a boat bound for the Greek mainland. He was fingerprinted and released that day.
Family members deny any criminal offense and said they simply had three open orders for which they hadn’t yet given receipts. “The government catches us, and leaves the big ones,” Mr. Mavrommatis said.
Public prosecutors for the region say Ms. Mavrommatis and her son are charged with a misdemeanor of giving “fictitious invoices,” and are due to appear in court in November.
Financial and riot police returned to the island shortly afterward and checked more local establishments, a show of force many found objectionable”
But here is the really relevant quote:
“The tavern owner on Hydra, you took her in shackled,” said Alexis
Tsipras, the head of the main opposition party, Syriza, which has
accused the government of not going after the biggest tax evaders. “Will
you take any of those who have billions untaxed abroad to the bench in
shackles? We are waiting to see. You won’t take them. We will take them,
though.”
Extraterritorial taxation, coming soon to your government slave neighborhood.
Confederate, “those” in your quote probably means Greek residents that have untaxed billions abroad. In every country I go to, there are always mega rich people who fit into this category.
I’m already a tax slave where I live. I just accept that as a fact of life. We can’t get a lifeboat and live forever in the middle of the ocean. Governments will forever lay claim to our productivity. The complaint of most people on here, I bet, is that we don’t like the stress of having 2 governments lay claim to our productivity. It’s already bad enough with just one!
Confederate’s Greek article shows that even VAT is a coercive tax (in Canada HST)–which authorities enforce at the point of a gun. All taxation is force and violence.
@geeez: How high could your income taxes go before you no longer “just accept that as a fact of life“? If you listen to the progressives then as long as thier beloved state deems it “fair” you can be taxed at 99.99%.
Those Greek shipping magnates can“live forever in the middle of the ocean” and probably do. Syriza is the new Greek party that many on the left are calling Nazis so if I was Greek and heard them say “we will take them” I would be worried. In any case I’ll bet all those Greek “billionaires” have set up residency in Monaco or somewhere else more hospitable to capital (some are probably regretting their association with the US).
Just as with Obama’s rhetoric about “asking the rich to pay a little more” we know that these western governments have their sights set on a lot smaller fish than those whom they are currently demagoging. The upper middle class have a huge aggregate wealth but not enough wealth individually to protect themselves from the thieving state through politics or the legal system.
The plaintiffs are Judge Peter Beer and a rainbow coalition of some of
the most distinguished judges on the federal bench. They have just won a
ruling that prohibits Congress from suspending a system of automatic
pay increases designed to protect their honors from inflation.
Another crass example of the ruling elites exempting themselves from the punishment they are meting out to the rest of the tax slaves.
@Tim
This has a lot to do with non-resident filing. Mr Matthews’ interview highlights the fact that the IRS is collapsing under the weight of what congress wants them to do and that security breeches and mistakes are a concern in what they’ve been mandated to enforce. It’s been 10 months since we’ve made our OVDI submission. The only communication we’ve received from the USG is from Treasury telling us that they’ve rejected our PLR and are kicking it over to OVDI. This could indeed be a very long wait.
Look what the Greek tax collector thugs are doing to those who resist government theft of 23% VAT on restaurant food sales:
But here is the really relevant quote:
Extraterritorial taxation, coming soon to your government slave neighborhood.
Confederate, “those” in your quote probably means Greek residents that have untaxed billions abroad. In every country I go to, there are always mega rich people who fit into this category.
I’m already a tax slave where I live. I just accept that as a fact of life. We can’t get a lifeboat and live forever in the middle of the ocean. Governments will forever lay claim to our productivity. The complaint of most people on here, I bet, is that we don’t like the stress of having 2 governments lay claim to our productivity. It’s already bad enough with just one!
Confederate’s Greek article shows that even VAT is a coercive tax (in Canada HST)–which authorities enforce at the point of a gun. All taxation is force and violence.
@geeez: How high could your income taxes go before you no longer “just accept that as a fact of life“? If you listen to the progressives then as long as thier beloved state deems it “fair” you can be taxed at 99.99%.
Those Greek shipping magnates can “live forever in the middle of the ocean” and probably do. Syriza is the new Greek party that many on the left are calling Nazis so if I was Greek and heard them say “we will take them” I would be worried. In any case I’ll bet all those Greek “billionaires” have set up residency in Monaco or somewhere else more hospitable to capital (some are probably regretting their association with the US).
Just as with Obama’s rhetoric about “asking the rich to pay a little more” we know that these western governments have their sights set on a lot smaller fish than those whom they are currently demagoging. The upper middle class have a huge aggregate wealth but not enough wealth individually to protect themselves from the thieving state through politics or the legal system.
Here is an interesting article about Beer v. United States where:
Another crass example of the ruling elites exempting themselves from the punishment they are meting out to the rest of the tax slaves.
@Tim
This has a lot to do with non-resident filing. Mr Matthews’ interview highlights the fact that the IRS is collapsing under the weight of what congress wants them to do and that security breeches and mistakes are a concern in what they’ve been mandated to enforce. It’s been 10 months since we’ve made our OVDI submission. The only communication we’ve received from the USG is from Treasury telling us that they’ve rejected our PLR and are kicking it over to OVDI. This could indeed be a very long wait.