Greece collected barely four out of every five euros in taxes due during the first quarter of 2026, highlighting the country’s continued struggle to improve tax compliance despite years of reforms aimed at tightening enforcement and broadening the tax base.
Data released by Greece’s tax administration showed that the overall on-time payment rate for value-added tax, personal and corporate income tax, and property tax stood at 80.92% in the January - March period. In practice, that means nearly one-fifth of tax obligations were not paid by the deadline. The figures offer a snapshot of the persistent weaknesses in Greece’s revenue collection system more than a decade after the country’s sovereign debt crisis forced Athens to overhaul its tax administration under the supervision of international creditors.
Value-added tax, one of the government’s most important sources of revenue, generated €4.76 billion in timely payments out of total liabilities of €5.88 billion, corresponding to a compliance rate of 80.87%. Performance improved in March, when the share of on-time VAT payments rose to 85.81%. Compliance was weaker among individual taxpayers. Personal income tax payments reached only 73.18% of amounts due, with households paying roughly €998 million on time out of total liabilities of €1.36 billion.
Corporate taxpayers recorded the strongest performance among the main tax categories. On-time corporate income tax payments reached 87.63%, while the compliance rate exceeded 93% in March.
Property tax collections also lagged, with taxpayers paying €442.79 million on time against total liabilities of €573.7 million, leaving the compliance rate at 77.18%. The category showed a marked deterioration toward the end of the quarter.
The data underscore how Greece continues to trail much of Europe in tax collection efficiency. According to the European Commission’s latest estimates on the so-called VAT gap - the difference between expected and actual VAT revenues - the average revenue loss across the European Union stood at 9.5% in 2023. That effectively means EU member states collect roughly nine out of every ten euros owed in VAT.
Austria recorded the bloc’s best performance, with a VAT gap of just 1%, followed by Finland at 3% and Portugal at 3.6%. Romania remained the weakest performer, with losses equivalent to 30% of potential VAT revenues.
