It seems unbelievable, and yet it is true. As an investigative report in Ta Nea reveals, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and a host of other professionals will have to pay 55 percent of their income this year in taxes and insurance contributions.

That percentage will rise to an astronomical 60 percent in 2019. The burden becomes even more unbearable when one factors in the ENFIA real estate tax for professional properties, auto registration taxes, and indirect taxes.

The surreal reality with which freelance professionals are being confronted is due to a surreal objective of the government: to set up its own success story on the foundation of over-taxation of the middle class. There is an entirely irrational conviction that a success story can rest upon the decimation of a most vital segment of the economy.

What is worse, many of these professions no longer enjoy the income of years past. Engineers face a construction sector that is essentially inert, and lawyers’ fees are much lower than in the past.

Yet, it is these professionals, along with salaried employees and pensioners, who are called upon to pay an unbearable bill, so that the government can meet the commitments that it undertook with the bailout memorandum, which it brought and signed.

This surreal reality is accompanied by the government’s claim that the economy is turning a page

That might have been true, under these harsh conditions that hit young professionals even harder, if the claim were not a veritable mockery.

Τελευταία Νέα