Greece's public finances recorded a large tax revenue overperformance in the first eight months of 2026, with the state collecting €49.5 billion in taxes, according to figures cited by columnist Agis Veroutis in Capital.gr. Even after stripping out €441 million in one-off proceeds from the concession of the Egnatia Odos highway and a casino licence for the Elliniko site, tax receipts still beat the government's target by €1.4 billion. The primary surplus of the state budget reached €6.5 billion over the period.
Officials have described the result as an overperformance, Veroutis wrote, adding that in plain terms it meant taxpayers had paid more than the government had originally calculated.
The surplus has built up as fuel prices climbed. Petrol has reached around €2.16 a litre and diesel €2.14 a litre, Veroutis noted. He estimated that if heating oil went on sale immediately, its price would be close to €1.90 a litre, up from €1.13 a year earlier. The Bank of Greece forecasts inflation of 3.5% for 2026.
Fuel taxes and VAT
Veroutis argued that while the government does not set international oil prices and bears no responsibility for the war in the Middle East, attacks on pipelines, or restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, it is responsible for the taxes levied on fuel. Petrol and diesel carry a special consumption tax per litre, he explained, and VAT is then calculated on the final taxable value, which includes that special tax. As prices rise, so does the VAT consumers pay, meaning the state collects more from both taxes on every litre sold. He said the same dynamic applies across consumption generally: higher prices generate more VAT revenue as long as consumption does not fall proportionally, while nominal wage rises can push up income tax even when they merely offset inflation rather than raising real purchasing power.
Where the extra money came from
Veroutis said nobody was claiming the entire overperformance stemmed from higher prices. Growth, rising employment, improved tax audits and reduced tax evasion had all contributed, he wrote, alongside taxes calculated on higher prices and nominal incomes. He said the finance ministry announces the total figure but does not disclose how much each factor contributed, allowing the whole overperformance to be presented as a success of economic policy. Greece's high public debt makes a primary surplus necessary, he added, and the country cannot afford to return to the deficits that triggered the bailout-era austerity programmes.
Squeezed household budgets
Family finances tell a different story, according to Veroutis. Apartment prices rose 5.5% in the second quarter of 2026, and by 7.1% in areas outside the major cities. In the first quarter, household disposable income stood at €39.1 billion against consumer spending of €40.4 billion, pushing the savings rate down to -3.3%. Households covered the shortfall from savings or borrowing, he wrote.
Highest tax burden on labour
Citing OECD data, Veroutis said the total tax burden on labour for a married worker with two children reached 37.5% in Greece in 2025, compared with an OECD average of 26.2%, the fourth-highest level among OECD countries. The measure combines income tax, employee and employer social security contributions and family benefits. He argued it was contradictory to ask young couples to start families while facing more expensive housing, costlier energy and heavily taxed wages, only for the state to offer a one-off benefit afterwards and call it family policy.
Calls for automatic rebates
Veroutis credited the government with cutting taxes and social security contributions in recent years, but said citizens judge economic success by how much money is left in their pocket between paydays. If tax cuts are smaller than the rise in housing, energy and food costs, he wrote, household budgets suffer, fuelling public anger even as the country's headline economic indicators improve. He said that anger over the cost of living had not found political expression as it has in other European countries, arguing that Greece's opposition parties had failed to capitalise on it. He singled out opposition leaders Alexis Tsipras and Nikos Androulakis, mockingly calling them co-prime ministers, and accused them of wanting to hand out as an election bonus money effectively taken from ordinary workers who have to be at their jobs at 6am regardless of whether petrol costs €1.75 or €2.30 a litre.
He said he doubted any government could survive if petrol reached the psychological threshold of €2.50 a litre, equivalent to roughly €100 to fill a 40-litre tank in an average family car.
Veroutis said he could accept talk of a tax overperformance if the government published a breakdown showing how much came from growth, how much from audits and how much from higher prices. Revenue that flows permanently from growth and reduced tax evasion, he argued, could fund permanent cuts to taxes on labour and production. As an example, he proposed adjusting income tax brackets for inflation every year, so that a nominal pay rise meant only to offset lost purchasing power is not automatically taxed as a real income increase. He also proposed that when fuel price spikes push up VAT receipts, the extra revenue should be returned to citizens automatically, under rules and limits set in advance.
Such rules do not suit any government, Veroutis wrote, because they would remove its ability to choose the timing, the beneficiaries and the amount of each handout, and above all its ability to present tax refunds as its own generosity. The government can announce whatever overperformance it likes, he concluded, but the extra €1.4 billion is not a gift belonging to anyone in office. Taxpayers paid it.
