By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

One week before the end of the public consultation on the tax billeverything shows that the Ministry of Finance is inclined to listen to the objections that have been expressed – mainly by the Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners – regarding the conditions for granting a three-year tax exemption to property owners for the income from the rental of properties that were declared vacant or had been allocated for short term rental.

The draft law states that the properties must have been declared vacant or in short-term rental for the last 3 years. The property owners request that the time period for the vacancy status be set at one year, while for short-term rental residences it is sufficient that the acquisition of a Property Registry Number has been made even the day before the Prime Minister’s announcements in Thessaloniki (September 7, 2024). .

Especially on the issue of short-term renting, the Ministry of Finance is very positive about changes, with its official stating that it does not sound unreasonable. The issue of gaps seems more difficult but without being rejected.

As part of the consultation, the Deputy Minister of Finance Christos Dimas he met with the federation of tax technicians-accountants who expressed their reservations about the changes being promoted in the process of submitting tax returns.

The four-month period from March 15 to July 15 is judged insufficient according to accountants, a period of 5 months (February 1 to June 30) would be more functional. As they point out, if weekends and holidays are excluded, in fact 6.7 million statements must be submitted in just 85 days, which means almost 80,000 statements/day.

In fact, the fact that the bill provides for an escalation of the tax deduction for taxpayers who will make a one-off payment, is an indirect way of pressuring for faster submission of declarations that will put a lot of pressure on the system, especially in the first 45 days when the deduction is the largest.

Since the pressure will be high from the very first day, the system must respond to it and everything must work perfectly. The tax experts request the operation of a test platform – before the opening of the normal one for the submission of tax returns – so that through the tests most of the problems that may appear have been solved before the start of the process and not during it, such as it happened this year.

In addition, they ask for her responsibility AADE and therefore the risk of a fine, not to be limited to opening the tax return submission platform on time, but to “check” whether technical problems will occur and whether the filling instructions are both timely and valid.
The Deputy Minister and the Federation have renewed their appointment for next week in order to see if any of their proposals can go ahead.

A week before the expiration of the public consultation, the bill has gathered 178 comments. Most of the objections relate to the significant increase in the resilience fee imposed on properties available for short-term letting.