O VALOR DA PARALELA

Segundo um estudo realizado no âmbito de uma tese de mestrado, 

Economia paralela representa 24,2 por cento do PIB português

Índice da Economia Não Registada, apresentado no Sábado passado, revela que, em termos agregados, o peso da economia paralela passou de 9,3 para 24,2 por cento do PIB nacional, no espaço de 30 anos. A tendência é para continuar a crescer.

Em 1970, ainda segundo o mesmo estudo, a economia paralela representaria menos de 10%.
----
Correlacionado: Veja-se aqui,
e aqui

TELL a Greek or an Italian that the only certainties in life are death and taxes and they will laugh—and not because they believe in immortality. Southern European countries have long struggled to collect taxes. By their nature, of course, the data are difficult to collect but Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are thought to have some of the largest unofficial economies in the OECD (see chart).

Now that these countries are trying to get their finances in order, bringing down rates of tax evasion is a high priority. The Italian authorities miss out on an estimated €100 billion ($131 billion) annually in uncollected taxes. European and IMF officials warned Greece this month that curbing tax evasion, which costs the government €15 billion each year, would be vital in unlocking more bail-out money.

A tax amnesty can winkle out cash. Earlier this year the Italian finance ministry completed an amnesty programme which sucked more than €100 billion in offshore funds back home and brought €5.6 billion into state coffers. But this is a one-off boost to revenue. Achieving a long-term improvement in the tax take is much harder, especially in times of crisis.

For one thing, it costs a lot. Italy’s revenue agency already has a special finance-police force to find evaders, which tend to be companies and rich people. But Greece’s finances are stretched too tightly to hire lots more staff. The authorities are hoping that a radical reorganisation of the tax agencies and €42m-worth of new software to unify various tax databases will do the trick. But more investment will be needed to make a real difference.

Changing citizens’ attitudes to paying tax will be harder still. According to Friedrich Schneider of the University of Linz in Austria, a lot of evasion is down to “tax rebellion”. People simply do not feel that the services the state offers are worth paying taxes for. Improving those services is the work of years, not months. As for the idea that southern Europeans have a greater natural propensity to cheat on their taxes than virtuous northern types, that looks like hooey. A study earlier this year described the results of a tax-audit experiment in Denmark, which showed that rates of evasion shot up when Danes reported their own income.

Stamping out tax evasion may not be an entirely good thing anyway when times are hard. A 2002 IMF report found that, because most of the money made in the unofficial economy is spent—and taxed—in the official economy, it is difficult to assess whether the overall impact of the underground economy is negative or positive. “The shadow economy, at least in Greece, creates additional income and welfare which wouldn’t [otherwise] exist during this recession,” says Mr Schneider.

None of this is exactly fair on those law-abiding sorts who do pay their taxes, of course. But perhaps the most valuable short-term effect of gunning for tax evaders is to persuade those who do pay up to keep doing so.