Greek government unsure about real estate taxation

The Greek government is uncertain about real estate taxation even to a non-existent market, which this year will mark a negative transaction record at about 30,000, one seventh almost against the peak of 2005.

So while the Greek economic team seems to adopt the proposals to reduce the tax on transfers in order to drastically reduce transaction costs and implement what has been proposed by international organizations to Greece the last 20 years (to pay annual taxes for possession and not acquisition), here comes the Single Real Estate Tax, which is considered more proportionate, but contains traps in such cases as f or land owners and long-term vacant properties.

‘The fact that each asset will have its own identity and tax burden, is a positive factor that could contribute along with other necessary measures to a restart for the land ownership market and therefore the whole economy,’ the homeowners say via their president Stratos Paradias on the grounds that, when assessing the entire property of each taxpayer their tax expenses will not grow excessively.

However, the new single tax leads to a fixation of the alleged emergency tax on property, while its strong progressiveness eventually ends in predation, particularly for land owners affected by the market decline. As Paradias states, tax rates as provided for in the draft law are too high and should be reduced by half. Especially for properties in areas with a high zone price, the taxation may reach up to 30 euros per sq.m. per year. The glaring injustices, according to the owners, include the fact that the long-term vacant properties should be treated as equal with incomplete ones and be taxed at 40% of the tax burden in the zone of their location.