26 Replies to “Greek Recipes For Survival”

  1. “The demands are outrageous, and include a requirement that the business pay taxes in advance equal to 50 percent of estimated profit in the first two years. And the taxes are collected even if the business suffers a loss.”
    It makes me wonder if the Greek state would have made such onerous tax regulations if tax evasion was not the Greek National Sport.

  2. Little lefty heads are exploding whn they turn to that page. I can hear thm now, “but the governmnt is only doing it for the sake of th hungry chiiiiiildren!”

  3. That illusion of security.
    The only difference between generations.
    But what a socially corrosive myth.
    And when the public becomes aware that their security is illusionary, civil society falls.
    Dry-goods, medicines and ammo.
    Welcome to the future… not much different to our “Tribal” past.

  4. It makes ME wonder if tax evasion would be the Greek National Sport, if the Greek state didn’t make such onerous tax regulations.
    Getting back at the scofflaws by screwing honest people? How is that supposed to work exactly? Yet it’s SOP for socialists the World over…

  6. “I worked diligently to make the perfect French macaron … My idea was to convey the essence of Greece …”
    Ooookaaay.

  7. You don’t have to go far to find similar tax schemes.
    CRA demands you pay, quarterly, the tax rate you paid the year previous, as a commission sales person.
    So, if you made $100k the previous year, but in the ucrrent year, you’ve only made 30k, like my wife did 3 years ago, you have to borrow to pre-pay your taxes. Nice huh? And that’s WITH a conservative government.
    The only way to get out of it is to get an hourly job (and quit your sales position) or, sweat it out for the year, get your refund sans interest, and turn into an annual filer instead.
    Greece is far from alone in draconian style tax regimes. Rev Canada is right there as an “evil entity”

  8. Don’t mock someone till you have walked in their foot steps , and you may in your life time.

  9. I understand the temptation to criticize people for mockery, but there’s three problems here.
    The first, these were both journalists. Given the state of journalism in most of Europe, it’s a fairly safe assumption that they were both cheerleaders for the very policies that caused their situation.
    Second, she recognized the impending economic collapse, and that she would need a marketable skill in a bankrupt economy, so… she learns to make pastries? Anyone with an ounce of economic sense would realize that any start-up involving food prep is a desperate gamble in the BEST of economies – even without the onerous regulations and taxes that eventually crippled them.
    Third, they finally move out of Greece because her husband gets a job… at an online newspaper.
    So they contribute to the cause of their own situation, do all the wrong things to fix it, and learn nothing from it. If that isn’t grounds for mockery, nothing is.

  10. Ms. Antypa writes: “I, like thousands of others trying to start businesses, learned that I would be at the mercy of public employees who interpreted the laws so they could profit themselves.” Wow. Just Wow.
    She worked for this leftist newspaper Eleftherotypia for 17 (yes, 17!!) years – 17 years in an echo chamber, apparently, because this Greek corruption was a “revelation” to her??!! I guess she thought she would continue uninterrupted in her sheltered, secure life of being pseudo-intellectual writer and café protestor. So, 17 years later she is finally forced to try to create a business, and then, and only then, is she “mugged” by the graft and corruption of her leftist compatriots (“you didn’t build that”) in government ? Unfortunately, she can’t even bring herself to use the term “corruption” – and I expect she’s even too dim, or unaware, to change her political views…

  11. Learning to bake is expensive. I speak from experience.
    Most Greek women are great bakers already. Again I speak from experience.
    When people are broke and out of work the last thing they buy is pastries. Again…experience.
    I have known several people who decide to start up their own businesses and the woman all think they can master baking, chocolate or catering by reading a couple books. It never seems to dawn on them that the people who are good at these things and make a living out of them have been working on their skill for decades.

  12. “CRA demands you pay, quarterly, the tax rate you paid the year previous, as a commission sales person.
    So, if you made $100k the previous year, but in the ucrrent year, you’ve only made 30k, like my wife did 3 years ago, you have to borrow to pre-pay your taxes. Nice huh? And that’s WITH a conservative government.”
    Sorry, but this is incorrect. You don’t have to pay an installment equal to a quarter of last years taxes if you earn less the following year. CRA will charge interest if you don’t pay those installments and you UNDERPAY your tax installments for the following year. If you have paid the correct installments there is no penalty.

  13. “any start-up involving food prep is a desperate gamble in the BEST of economies”
    Yes. Most new businesses, as a group, are prepared food retail and most of them fail in the first 2 years.
    I remember seeing Greeks lined up behind government trucks with armed Greek soldiers overseeing the distribution of food to waiting people.
    That sort of environment should not inspire one to start up a new pastry business.

  14. Moronto Star and CBC “employees” take note: making pastries might not be a solution to your future.

  15. The idiot rules for starting a business she’s talking about. What she describes is worse than it is in Ontario.
    But… not a lot worse.

  16. She mentions the Huffpo as a reference?
    Ignorance can be overcome through learning,however,you can’t fix stupid.

  17. I haven’t spoken with my father about the Greek situation in a few years. He worked his entire adult life for Sask-Tel and really loved it. As a union guy for all those years, he’s a “true believer” and everyday tunes into the CBC to see & hear how with real funding most of the world problems would just fade away.
    He had a simple idea for repairing the Greek economy.
    If those money grubbers would just pay their taxes, they’d be alright in a couple of years.
    So, we talk about other things.

  18. and those that have learned to bake well through years of at home experience, have learned to eat their mistakes as well. I’m not suggesting they have weight problems, only that they know where dinner’s coming from.

  19. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Going to the monstrous bureaucracy which is Belgium is not much of an improvement over Greece! I knew doctors who gave the Belgian government 65% of everything they invoiced and Belgium hosts the largest flea market in the world – on Sundays when the tax inspectors don’t work.

  20. you are still EXPECTED to pay. As I said, sure, you get it back, LESS the interest you borrowed. And as fars the penalties, you are correct, there are none.
    Several hour long phone calls to CRA as evidence………..with them reading from the cue cards……

  21. DanBC – the phone calls you made to CRA: hope you have the names and numbers of those with whom you talked. Accountants and tax preparers have many stories of the REALLY, REALLY BAD advice handed out by CRA employees over the years: we’ve had to deal too often with the consequences of clients following advice from CRA (as opposed to having to deal with clients who preface their expectations with ‘but my friend does this’; that’s another story). When I phone for information, and the answer I receive is inconsistent with what I have read and learned, I ask for chapter and verse. If the CRA person can’t give me that detail, I go elsewhere.
    Go to http://www.cra.gc.ca and – in the search box – put “tax installment calculations”. If your computer is like mine, you’ll see a section labeled “Paying your income tax by instalments” (they’re using the English as opposed to the US spelling). Then read “Calculating your payments”. It gives you three options. The only caveat is that you can’t owe when you file your taxes the following April. Obviously, the CRA agents you had the misfortune to talk to gave incomplete and misleading advice; possibly policy to ensure CRA extracts the maximum possible from the taxpayer at the earliest possible moment. After all, they don’t pay interest on overpayments except under certain circumstances.

  22. Well, I am an accountant so I am pretty sure I am right. As noted by another poster do not believe what CRA necessarily tells you.

  23. So she worked for a leftist newspaper, and thus enabled the mess that Greece is today. She deserved what happened to her.
    When the same thing begins to happen to that extent in Quebec and Ontario the innocent who did not vote for this socialism will also suffer.

  25. The NYT consoles that slice of it’s American readership recently squeezed out of the middle class:
    Buck up. As a tumbleweed in the new globalized, have and have-not economy, you can always take Tom Friedman’s advice and invent your job. If the government makes that impossible, always remember it was worse under the Nazis.
    (Wait… America was never under German occupation. Actually, I seem to recall the 20th century being The American Century.)
    (Shhh. ~~ Ed.)

  26. CRA – Corporations – You are expected to pay installments – 3 monthly payments based on 1/12 taxes of the second previous year and 9 monthly payments based on 1/12 taxes of the previous year. So far so good.
    If you overpay, it is cheerfully refunded without interest (might be minor interest depending on how quickly the refund comes). If you pay the exact amount, you owe or are refunded nothing. If you underpay but have paid the required installments, any shortfall is due within 3 months of year end. If you underpay but have not made the required installments, you owe interest from whenever the installment should have been made.
    A lot of people don’t bother with installments because the interest is not all that brutal and CRA makes no heroic efforts to collect installments.

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