Greeks faithfully paying their debts to the state in installments will be able to unfreeze locked accounts and have them protected up to varying levels to prevent confiscation under an arrangement beginning Jan. 1, 2020.
For now, the state can empty bank accounts and safe deposit boxes and even what had been protected accounts, leaving debtors – apart from those who hide their money in secret foreign accounts – without assets.
That had driven many Greeks to try to find ways to hide their cash and assets to prevent being taken by the government which has gone easy on major tax cheats, including celebrities, and as thousands still tuck their money away in other countries.
To get protected accounts said Kathimerini, debtors must be paid two tranches of any plan (either the standard debt repayment plan of 12 or 24 installments tranches or the long one up to 120 installments) and submitted an online application bearing the account number to be protected from confiscation.
The current protection level of 1,250 euros ($1,391.79) per account will be increased to the sum of at least the last pair of monthly tranches paid multiplied by 3 or 4.5, which means debtors who made five installments of 500 euros ($556.72) will earn a rate of 3.8 for a protected account that will be 1,900 ($2115.53.)
Successive governments have tried various methods to get people who owe state debts to pay even though many couldn’t because of repeated pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions and job losses during a nearly decade-long economic crisis worsened by austerity.
Read more at thenationalherald.com
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