Luxury cars in taxman’s sights

Luxury cars whitethorn beryllium astatine the halfway of this story – but they are lone the surface. Behind the tinted windows lies a web of power, privilege and quiescent rule-breaking by a cross-section of κοινωνικά groups.

From firm offices and elite aesculapian practices to sports absorption circles and the edges of the underworld, some of the drivers of these vehicles are thing but random. Shipowners, wealthy doctors, multi-market businessmen, manufacturers, agents handling million-euro contracts – and adjacent individuals linked to instrumentality enforcement – look to stock a communal strategy: registering high-end cars overseas to debar taxes astatine home.

Most of them state they are tax residents abroad. For example, a well-known doc declared himself a tax nonmigratory of Germany, but maintained a signifier successful Greece, his kid went to a backstage schoolhouse declaring a Greek code and, arsenic it was found, his true interests were successful our state and not successful Germany. Similarly, a businesswoman declared her tax residence successful Egypt, while her kid went to a Greek schoolhouse and she lived successful Greece for astir of the time. Essentially, galore of those progressive declared themselves tax residents overseas to debar paying taxes and fees.

The prime is not accidental. For some, it is simply a means of tax “optimization,” for others a tool for hiding assets, while successful much utmost cases it functions arsenic a screen for amerciable activities. Luxury vehicles with licence plates from countries such arsenic Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania and Albania were being used illegally successful Greece.

These practices came to airy aft the tax authority’s DEOS squad launched a large-scale crackdown that has led to the seizure of 229 luxury vehicles. Using information from tolls, customs and precocious integer hazard investigation tools, inspectors did not simply target the vehicles, but chiefly the profiles of the radical down them. That is, radical who look to person a precocious standard of living, but state a tax beingness extracurricular of Greece oregon income that is not successful enactment with their assets’ value.

Officials accidental the probe is ongoing, focusing connected some tax violations and imaginable transgression networks down the practice.