Debt-ridden Greece considers using snoops to catch tax cheats

LONDON (CNN) – Greece is a tourist hot spot. But if you’re going to the islands this summer, would you mind being wired to catch tax cheats?

A few tourists were asked if they would.

“I’m here on holiday. I want to have a good time and I want to have a good relationship with the Greeks that I meet at shops, cafes, and walking around the streets. I don’t have them to think I don’t think that I’m spying on them,” a tourist said.

“It depends on the situation. If you see someone so rich that they are not paying the taxes, OK I understand, so you have to pay. I am going to spy you,” another tourist said.

Finance Minister Yanis Varafoukis floated the idea in a letter reported in the Financial Times in early March. The letter was to the European Union.

Just one idea on how to collect tax in a country known for its cash economy.

No receipt, no tax is likely to be paid.

Varafaoukis says Greece is owned some 76 billion euros in missing taxes, and the idea would help create what he calls, ‘a new tax compliance culture.’

The new Greek government is scrambling to find new ways, some might say creative ways, to fund itself without a third bailout.

Those that have already loaned Greece some 240 billion euros have said the new government must not roll back austerity and must continue structural reform.

During this crisis, the Greek economy greatly needs these tourists and their money and doesn’t want to alienate them.

“I think this idea of the Greek government of having tax spies could be a good idea to remove, or to control, tax evasion. So I think I could do this job. I could be prepared,” said Erika Ruiz, an Italian tourist.

“Tax spies, I believe it is a good, a positive thing and also a negative thing. Good for tourism and strengthening the government’s resolve in stopping any potential illegal activity but also bad for the people who then would feel the government is betraying them somehow,” said Jeremy Rogers, a British tourist.

The idea would also include enlisting Greeks, like nannies, students, housekeepers.

Greeks spying on Greeks, with sound and video.

No formal word from Brussels if a promise to spy on Greeks will become part of economic reform.