Property tax

The maintenance of the tax-free threshold at its current level beyond 2020 will create a fiscal hole of 466 million euros despite the abolition of the countermeasures that had been scheduled for next year, while the European Commission is accusing the government of constantly overestimating its investments without implementing them.

Greek property owners are among Europe's most heavily burdened by taxes, according to a study by Washington-based think tank the Tax Foundation that examines the tax burden on ownership and its ratio to all tax revenues.

More than 750,000 property owners, who account for 50 percent of the annual revenues stemming from the Single Property Tax (ENFIA), will see no drop in their ENFIA dues this year, which effectively leaves the middle classes out of the 2019 tax reduction.

The promised Single Property Tax (ENFIA) discount will have a ceiling of 100 euros per owner, according to an amendment tabled in Parliament for a Health Ministry bill on Wednesday.

In a pilot crackdown last year, the Independent Public Revenue Authority (AADE) traced hundreds of foreign nationals who purchased properties in Greece without declaring them, thus avoiding the ENFIA property tax, and dozens of taxpayers who had concealed their incomes from rental properties. 

The Greek property market appears to have emerged from its decade-long hibernation: Bank of Greece figures showed that 1.35 billion euros flowed into the country last year for property purchases (mainly houses) by foreign investors.

Last Monday the finance ministry tabled in Parliament an emergency amendment to a health ministry bill pompously entitled "Modernisation and Restructuring of the Institutional Framework of Private Clinics, Establishment of a Public Health Organisation and Establishment of a National Organisation for Neoplasia, and other provisions".

Greece is cutting taxes on dividends by 33 percent, hoping to draw investors and provide some relief for companies, which have complained about overtaxation since Greece's debt crisis nearly a decade ago.

One of the companies riding the wave of interest in short-term leasing and in property acquisitions by non-European Union buyers is Athens B&B Properties.

Greece needs a simplification in property transaction procedures and the easing of property taxation on tax-strained households for the local realty market to increase its recovery rate, Canada-based rating agency DBRS said in a commentary issued on Thursday.