The Greek government's ability to tackle a deep-rooted culture of tax evasion is rapidly becoming a central issue in whether the country can remain in the euro.

If they can't stamp out tax evasion and corruption, the likes of Germany will never believe they are doing their best.

Widespread tax evasion is thrown back at the Greeks every time they try to make a case in Europe about how difficult life there has been in the last seven years.

Everyone from barstool experts in pubs in Dublin, to the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has pointed the finger at how little they appear to pay in tax. The situation is more complex.

Billions in unpaid tax is owed to the state. But 87pc of the tax is owed by just 15pc of the defaulters.

Tough legislation in Greece has seen hundreds of people thrown in jail awaiting trial for tax evasion and corruption. High profile cases have included a former defence minister, a Sunday newspaper proprietor, a bank chief executive, a former mayor and other public figures.

The tough approach is not yielding big rewards. Tax receipts in January fell off a cliff - 20pc below projections. This followed a 14pc miss in December despite being broadly on target in the first 11 months of the year.

The first ever anti-corruption minister, Panagiotis Nikoloudis, has been tasked with recovering €2.5bn through a crackdown on tax evasion. He has sent 3,200 files to the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE).

The squad has a stigma attached to it. "Half the people there are said to be corrupt. I don't deny there is some truth in it," Nikoloudis said in a recent interview.

In 2010, the Greek tax authorities cracked down on those in wealthy Athens suburbs who had not paid tax on their swimming pools. Just 324 had been claimed by the locals. Revenue officials got into a helicopter and counted them and found 16,974.

It isn't a very Irish form of tax evasion. Here we were more likely to have cash under the bath than an undeclared pool.

In Ireland we should know a lot about tax evasion because we were experts at it for decades, if not centuries. However, from the late 1990s onwards this country made significant strides in tackling the culture of tax evasion. The battle is not unlike that faced by Greece but there is one massive difference. In Ireland 15 years of unhindered economic progress formed the backdrop for introducing more powerful legislation to tackle the problem.

The Greeks are being asked to stamp out tax evasion during an unprecedented recession and in half the time it took us in Ireland.

The other big difference is corruption in the police force and the tax authorities in Greece. We have had penalty points wiped out but there is little evidence of police or revenue officials taking cash to let people off serious crimes.

A hiatus was reached in the 1990s here when enormous high profile tax evasion scandals were examined in detail, and in public.

Ansbacher, NIB, offshore accounts, the DIRT inquiry and the tribunals, all played a part in forcing a change of attitude among the arms of the state and the public too.

The shadow economy, which includes undeclared or under-reported earnings, is still worth about €20bn per year in Ireland, or 12pc of GDP. However, we now have the sixth lowest rate of shadow activity in Europe. Greece is very high up the charts with an estimated 27pc.

Over €1bn has been collected from special investigations at the Revenue Commissioners here. However, the DIRT inquiry represents the closest parallel to problems in Greece.

There were an estimated 300,000 non-resident bank accounts in Ireland in the 1980s. Farmers living down the road, but providing an address in London, had hot money in there. Businesses with years of undeclared income also hid it in local bank branch accounts with foreign addresses. The DIRT Inquiry report was utterly damning of the culture of tax evasion and the extent to which the banks were complicit in it, while state bodies did nothing. The Revenue Commisioners had few powers and were told not to use the ones they had.

A directive instructed revenue officials not to use the powers they had been given in 1986 to inspect documentation around non-resident accounts. Not even the DIRT inquiry could uncover out who had issued it.

The banks knew about this directive and kept running the deposits circus.

The Revenue Commissioners knew their credibility was at rock bottom in 1999 but rebuilt as an organisation very effectively from there. The Greek Syriza government knows that many people are not paying their dues. But pressurising huge numbers to pony up during an enormous crisis won't work. That is why it is focusing on a smaller group of wealthier individuals as well as smuggling.

Tax evasion in Greece is dominated by the professionals. A study by the University of Chicago and a Greek academic found that where evasion existed, it amounted to €29,000 for medics and doctors, €28,000 for engineers and €24,000 for lawyers.

More significantly, these guys actually earned between 2.24 and 2.45 times what they declared their earnings to be. Among the lower paid in agriculture and retailing it was 1.2 and 1.7 times. The wealthier they are, the bigger the porkies. The really wealthy elite in Greece have probably already moved most of their money offshore. Greece has a Herculean task in tackling this issue. It is virtually impossible to change a culture of tax evasion in a hurry and in bad times.

Much of our progress was made between 1990 and 2005. During that time we slashed personal and corporate taxes. Economic output in Ireland doubled between 1990 and 2000. The Greek economy has contracted by nearly 25pc since 2008. It is losing jobs and increasing taxes.

Similarly, when our economy contracted in 2008, shadow economy activity rose again. Imagine if the Germans had told Albert Reynolds to tackle tax evasion in Ireland before giving out the EU billions in structural funds. We would be better in this country to lend some practical and honest advice rather than join others in stereotyping the Greeks.

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