Greece sends tax inspectors to anger management seminars

Until Greece's economic meltdown, anger management was an alien concept at the country's finance ministry. Patience and politesse were qualities sorely missing in interactions between Greeks and officials tasked with prying duties out of some of the nation's most talented tax dodgers.

Today these are the buzzwords flying around the ground-floor training room at 1 Handris Street. For tax inspectors attending mandatory seminars at the government building, anger management, like patience and politesse, are now seen as essential prerequisites of an increasingly stressful job.

"Today, in Greece, everyone is either unhappy or angry when they have to go and pay at the tax office," Fotis Kourmouris, a senior official at the finance ministry's public revenues department said. "There is a lot of negative emotion … in the framework of better customer service, classes in psychological and emotional intelligence had become necessary."

An alarming rise in violent incidents against tax officers prompted Athens's fragile two-party coalition to launch the training. With more and more levies being slapped on ordinary Greeks – while the rich and well connected are perceived to get off scot-free – inspectors have found themselves at the sharp end of popular rage. In recent months visiting auditors have been chased out of remote villages, hounded out of towns and booted off islands by an increasingly desperate populace.

"We've had multiple cases of violence at tax offices by angry members of public, including physical assaults; shots were fired in one case, and one attacker came with an axe," said Trifonas Alexiadis, vice-chairman of the national association of employees at state financial services.

Around 4,000 tax office employees are required to attend the EU-funded courses, which cover such challenges as attendees dealing with an imaginary rude-caller moments after their spouse has filed for divorce.

"Every employee who deals with customers will attend them over the next six to eight months," said Kourmouris. "We are not only trying to improve relations but break the vicious cycle. Tax offices blame citizens [for the country's fiscal woes] and citizens blame tax offices for all their problems. It is important that trust is rebuilt."

More than four years after the eruption of Greece's debt crisis, tax evasion remains at the root of its perilous economic state. Government officials put tax arrears at over €60bn (£50m), the equivalent of almost a fifth of public debt.

Although headway has been made in plugging the country's leaky tax collection apparatus – starting with the enforcement of a highly unpopular property tax – catching dodgers is still a tricky business. Wealthy Greeks in particular have become ever more ingenious at escaping the taxman's glare.

In an atmosphere of record poverty and unemployment, the government's failure to bring high-profile tax evaders to justice – despite the identities of around 2,000 suspected Greek tax evaders with bank accounts in Switzerland being revealed – has exacerbated the sense of inequity.

A welter of new tax laws has further fuelled public anger. Since the outbreak of the crisis, close to 30 new levies have been introduced by governments desperate to augment empty state coffers. "Too much pressure is being put on people who can't pay," said Alexiadis, who suggested that in such circumstances the classes were not only ill-conceived but "juvenile and unnecessary".

Standing in line on the first floor of a graffiti-splattered tax office in central Athens, the accountant Heracles Galanakopoulos agreed. "They produce a law that nobody understands and then produce another three to explain it. By the time people get here they are really very angry," he lamented, pointing around the room of bulging paper files and ill-tempered personnel.

"I myself spend at least five or six hours a day reading up on all these new laws and still can't keep up. Anger management is a nice idea but in a system that is so absurd it's not going to make a jot of difference."