Abstract
The European Union is a unique economic and political union, a single "internal" market with over than 510 million inhabitants. Further coordination in the field of taxation is required, since it is not yet integrated into the E.U. policy and remains under the responsibility of national governments. However, the economic and financial turmoil caused by the crisis of 2008 and the new challenges resulted from the globalization and digitalization of the economy, require profound reforms to tax systems. Thus, fiscal policy is a significant priority on the EU agenda: firstly, in order to stabilize public finances, stimulate growth and competitiveness and finance the European social welfare model as well as to tackle tax evasion and aggressive tax planning, developed mainly by multinationals. The present paper attempts to explore on a theoretical and empirical basis the challenges and possible developments towards harmonization in European taxation, at a critical juncture, not only for the integration but also for the existence of the European Union. More specifically, it investigates the Greek taxation and its structural weaknesses through empirical research conducted with questionnaires distributed among 225 tax officers, accountants, and accounting executives and statistical processing of their response. The results were examined through descriptive analysis, segmented in seven theoretical domains based on the examination of both audit literature and the present taxation state of Greece. The findings reveal that structural problems remain unresolved within the Greek tax system. However, it is understood that issues of distrust toward the taxation system may hinder harmonization processes.
Highlights
Even though fiscal recovery is starting to take place in the European Union, it seems rather unequal between the member states
The structure of labour taxation differs between the Member States, since some have a higher proportion of revenue raised from consumption taxes, and from taxes on labour
The European Union has consisted of member states with different policies and socioeconomic structures
Summary
Even though fiscal recovery is starting to take place in the European Union, it seems rather unequal between the member states. The relation between taxation and growth is bilateral: the fiscal policy in developed countries is often different than the one applied to developing ones, while the least developed economies have to face different difficulties in order to raise tax revenues. In this context, tax competition as a result of the globalised economy is taking huge dimensions preoccupying the academic community in the last decades according to numerous available references. According to European Commission, one-third of the potential VAT revenues is lost due to tax evasion and fraud These problems limit the efficiency of controls and the general efficacy of services. The findings are discussed and the most interesting deductions are presented followed by possible future extensions of the current research
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