Income tax

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday announced four new initiatives meant to prop up hard-hit households and businesses, including an increase in the payment installments for income and property taxes.

The submission rate of 2019 income tax declarations is growing, according to data from the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), with most processed statements incurring no additional tax.

The discount for the timely payment of taxes helped prevent budget revenues from collapsing in April, although they did post a reduction of 1.35 billion euros in the January-April period, according to data announced by the State General Accounting Office on Monday.

Greece's taxes and social security contributions put this country second among the 36 member-states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in terms of dues to the state for workers with children.

The Finance Ministry is considering three scenarios for easing the blow to property owners who miss out on 40 percent of their rental revenues for March, April and possibly May, the most likely providing for those months' rents to be exempt from income tax.

Tax breaks, the settlement of dues in installments, and discounts for households and businesses are among the government's plans for supporting the state budget in terms of revenues and spending.

Apart from the reduction of the corporate income tax from 28 to 24 percent and the halving of the tax on dividends from 10 to 5 percent, the government's draft tax bill includes a number of other incentives aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship, attracting highly skilled workers in Greece and bolstering investment activity to accelerate growth.

The new tax bill submitted for public consultation on Thursday contains some very favorable provisions for corporations, which will see their taxes slashed by about 30 percent next year.

Almost half a million taxpayers failed to pay taxes of more than half a billion euros in August, according to the statistics of the Independent Authority for Public Revenues.

These arrears mainly concerned income tax, where debts grew 15.6 percent compared to the same month in 2018, and value-added tax, where debts increased 5.9 percent from August last year.

Freelance professionals and all personal enterprises in general are the biggest winners of the new tax bill. As of 2020 they will enjoy a reduction in their tax bills amounting to or in some cases even exceeding 1,300 euros each, thanks to the slashing of the basic tax rate from 22 to 9 percent.