Business In Greece: How'bout Doing The Islands Instead?

A friend who -- in his words -- is cursed to have his home in Athens Greece, wishes to set up a small company in Greece. It is a sort of simple garage operation designing & assembling audio devices, very small scale.

First you have to register your comapny and to do it "fast track" has taken 6 weeks exactly - not counting the time to gather the "papers" (yes, that's right, hard copies) which took the better part of two weeks prior to this. Fortunately, this friend has another friend who is very well versed in Greece's bureacratic labyrinths and had warned in advance of what is really needed -- as opposed to what the indifferent civil servant at the tax office says is needed.

Then, 6 weeks into the saga, the register of commerce (another obligatory and paying step to creating a company in Greece) rejected the file because the shareholders' resumes were missing. That is after they had requested, tax returns, address, etc all sorts of private data that are the domain of the NSA and terrorists in other parts of the world.

The resumes were necessary, it was claimed, to see if shareholders have a degree attesting to knowledge in electronics!!??

By the same brilliant piece of reasoning, every telecom company's shareholders team must have one person with a degree in telecom and any football club operation must have at least one shareholder with a degree in football... And what about the entertainment industry: a degree in applied copulation?

Then, the moment came to open a bank account: why not open it before? Because you cannot open an account until you have a company.

This takes about one month and requires the same package of private data, this time given out to a bank teller who probably has little better to do than gossip about your tax return with her / his boy/girl friend.

 And onece youre up and going, there is more: if you plan on exporting, you will never receive a return VATreturns owed to you without a consideration of exactly 10% (under the table) for small sums dropping to 5% for large sums.

Worse, if you are in arrears and request that the VAT owed is balanced agaist your arrears - forget it. It doesn't work that way.


Business in Greece?

What a joke!


Try holidaying instead. Prices have gone down in certain respects and you might even consider bying some property - pay the seller abroad, in cash if possible, and there's a win-win situation right there.