Property transactions probed
Tax administration to target suspicious realty transfers, notaries and land registry officials
The increase of the tax-free threshold for parental concessions and donations to 800,000 euros each and for property transfers, many of which are carried out in cash, have activated the monitoring mechanism of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE), which will root out violations of tax legislation.
Based on the tax administration’s planning, AADE will probe the cases of thousands of property transactions, parental gifts, donations and inheritances, as well as monitoring more than 100 notaries and land registry officials.
Soaring real estate prices and high demand from Greeks as well as foreign investors have sounded the alarm at AADE, which is setting out to investigate 2,500 cases.
The monitoring process will also include older cases, dating since 2017, which concern properties outside the objective values system and run the risk of falling outside the statute of limitations at the end of the year.
As far as notaries are concerned, the inspectors of the tax mechanism will seek out problematic cases that are related to donations and parental concessions following the increase of the tax threshold to €800,000, as well as checking the so-called ENFIA certificate; that means they will crosscheck whether the Single Property Tax for properties sold in the last five years has been paid in full.
Meanwhile, taxpayers who are tenants will need to declare in their tax statement the rents they paid last year, either for their main residence or their holiday home, or even for the house any children of theirs live while studying in another part of the country (student homes are declared as a secondary residence). Tenants must also declare the details of their landlords. However, data for the period for January to May are already filled using the details collected last year for the “Power Pass.”
Furthermore, landlords will need to add in their tax declaration the details of their rented assets at Section 5 of the main form (E1), as leased properties constitute assets considered for the arbitrary assessment of taxpayers’ actual incomes.
