The ongoing fiscal calamity in Greece has again brought the issue of taxes - and how some countries seem to have such trouble collecting enough of them to finance their spending - to the forefront. Why is it that in places like Greece and its sister in perpetual fiscal distress (that would be Hungary) can't seem to convince their citizens to cough up the state's fair share of national income? One answer, of course, is that what the state considers a "fair share" is usually quite different from the opinion of its citizens. But another seems to be a rather bizarre reluctance on the part of the state to make big trouble for companies and individuals guilty of even the biggest tax frauds against the public purse.

I've long noticed a big disconnect between Hungary's "surplus" of taxes and bureaucratic heavy-handedness and its seeming shortage of high-profile tax fraud cases. But it wasn't until I decided to take a look around the local media for stories about the latter that the size of the gap became really striking.

Currently, the biggest story about tax fraud in Hungary involves a company called ScienNet, a rather shady outfit offering its clients discounts at a network of participating stores. Late last year, the head of the company, one Zsolt Leinemann (left), was arrested on charges of evading Ft 960 million (roughly €3.5 million) in taxes. Following a raid on the company's headquarters, the Customs and Finance Guard (VPOP) confiscated the firm's cash, as well as its computer servers, and in general shut the whole thing down.

While this might seem like a splendid example of the Magyar taxman doing his job, when you consider what might be called the "aggravating circumstance" of the case it is less impressive. Basically, ScieNet seems to have been targeted not just for swindling taxes, but also for running a pyramid scheme that may have drawn in as many as 400,000 "members." And the scale and scope of its alleged tax fiddle are nothing short of outlandish. For example, the company is a subsidiary of a US-based holding, used eleven different offshore companies, and is said to not even have had a local tax number.

Meanwhile, Leinemann was earlier involved in a diamond-trading company called Atlantis-Contor Kft that was also said to have operated a pyramid scheme, according to index.hu. Its successor, DT Diamond Zrt, was reported to the police by the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority (PSZÁF) in 2004 for "performing unauthorized financial activities."

As for other notable tax fraud cases that actually resulted in significant prison sentences for their perpetrators, a search of the biggest online sources over the last few years came up stunningly short. A 2004 report on hetek.hu summarized a few such cases, which involved a pair of computer distributors called Portocom and Albacomp, major IT firm Synergon, a group of Békés County entrepreneurs selling fuel that hadn't been subject to the appropriate excise taxes, and the celebrated case of a village shepherd-turned-entrepreneur named József Stadler (left). Portocom and Albacomp were hit for fraud involving customs duties. Portocom imported notebook parts from Taiwan through offshore companies, improperly cutting their customs bill by 75%, until they were caught and four of the firm's executives were jailed. Synergon, one of Hungary' leading IT companies, was nailed for a different (but still very common) form of tax evasion: buying fictitious invoices from various phantom enterprises to lower its tax base. For his part, József Stadler was sentenced to nine years in prison in 1998 for tax fraud and other crimes. Currently, he is in the news after some other criminals allegedly threatened to kill him unless he paid them a ransom of Ft 10 million. He told the media he was unable to pay, because he had only Ft 250,000 in the bank.

Of course, there are other, less-publicized cases of individuals getting in big trouble for tax fraud. Earlier this month police arrested an unidentified man who had allegedly produced over Ft 1 billion worth of bogus invoices in his garage in Pécs. The man faces up to eight years in jail for the offense.

But overall, such cases seem to be very few and far between for a country where essentially everyone is guilty of some or another variety of tax fraud. More to the point, in many or most cases in which a trial ends in a jail sentence, the time served is significantly less than the headlines first suggest. For example, Stadler's original sentence of nine years was cut on retrial to four and a half years, of which he ended up serving just two, being eventually released in 2005 for "good behavior."

And while Stadler may have been ruined by his trouble with the tax law, the same can't be said for some of his fellows-in-tax-crime. János Minárovits (left), the former CEO of Albacomp who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2003, was back heading the company by 2007, while a founder and first CEO of Synergon returned to the IT business after completing his sentence.

Most stunning of all is how little of an impression such big trouble seems to have for those in it. The head of Portocom was quoted by the press defiantly saying that basically he had no choice but to "customize" the customs duties his firm was subject to, because Hungary's high tariffs at the time unfairly penalized domestic distributors.

Which seem pretty cheeky, until you consider that during a press conference held last month, the lawyers for the jailed head of ScienNet apparently stressed that the company was not officially in trouble for running a pyramid scheme, but, you know, just for massive tax fraud.