By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

Those who caught up, caught up… The new tax bill was published in the Official Gazette and from December 11, the use of cash – in whole or in part – in the purchase and sale of real estate is a thing of the past. Article 3 provides that contracts with the use of cash are considered invalid and provides for severe fines for notaries and mortgagees – if there is a transfer of contracts – with a minimum of €10,000 and a maximum of €500,000.

The state law now states that:

“…when drawing up the notarial documents for the transfer of real estate with compelling reason, the pre-contracts and the payment deeds, the payment of the price is made exclusively using bank means of payment. A notarial document of the first paragraph, in which an advance payment or partial or total payment of the price in cash is recorded, or in which the payment of the price using a bank means of payment is not recorded, is automatically invalid, it is prohibited to be transcribed in the relevant books and does not produce any legal result against the contractors, the State and any third party. Persons who violate the obligations to indicate in the contract the method of payment of the price exclusively using bank means of payment shall be subject to an independent fine equal to 10% of the price that does not appear to have been paid using a bank means of payment, which cannot be less than ten thousand euros 10,000 euros and exceed 500,000 euros, for each violation”.

Since the beginning of October when the government’s intention to legislate towards the abolition of cash became known to all, there has been a wave of shoppers rushing to complete purchases using cash taking advantage of the window of time until the law is passed and published.

It is characteristic that since the launch of AADE’s MyProperty platform, in March 2021, data show that 1 in 5 transfers has been completed with partial or full payment of the price in cash. Specifically, on a total of 338,511 real estate transfers worth €27.7 billion:

-42,613 were made in cash only with a value of €426m

-41,741 were made partly in cash with a value of €2.98bn

These cases are now targeted by AADE as they are estimated to involve a high risk of tax evasion, money laundering or even virtual transactions. The transfers of the last few weeks will also pass through the “sieve” of the authorities

At the same time, checks are already underway on 2,500 files of old property transfers, inheritances, parental benefits and donations, focusing on cases from the year 2017 for which the deadline for the Tax Administration to issue a corrective tax determination act expires on December 31, 2023. These cases mainly concern real estate outside the system of objective determination of their value, non-acceptance by the taxpayer of the provisional value of the D.O.Y. 100,000 euros.