Kathimerini is reporting today that Greece has achieved the largest increase in taxes in Europe from 2001-2012. Greeks pay 41.9% of their income to the government.

In contrast to this story, Kathimerini also reports that the rate of unpaid taxes is going parabolic.

We wrote a couple of weeks ago how on average, the rate of unpaid taxes was increasing by 680 million Euros a month.

Today Kathimerini reports the amount of unpaid taxes for September 2013 alone was 809 million Euros, an increase  of 18% over the monthly average. (You will notice that Kathimerini reported that the total level of unpaid taxes reached 60 billion Euros in July 2013 and yet today they report a figure of 59.66 billion Euros)

We fully expect to see headlines of tax arrears accumulating at the rate of 1 billion Euros a month in the next 3 months.

And this compels us to ask the question. If taxes are simply impossible to pay (because they are not tied to income eg fuel duty, vat, social security, income tax, yes income tax, property tax to name a few) at what point do these debts meet the text book definition of exploitation?

At what point will someone be able to say to the baliffs, “hold on, your taking the guy’s house for debts which you imposed upon him through taxes which were impossible for him to pay, how can that be legal? When did Tony Soprano become Prime Minister?”