ENFIA cut to benefit everyone

The taxpayers who bore the brunt of Greece’s fiscal streamlining over the past five years will be getting a much-needed break as of this year, paying lower taxes on their real estate assets.

A bill that will be tabled in Parliament in the coming days will provide for a 20 percent reduction to the Single Property Tax (ENFIA) for mid-scale assets, 10 percent for large assets and 30 percent for small properties. The cut will concern both the main and the supplementary tax, which means that all owners will benefit from the ENFIA reduction.

With this move, the government is abolishing a provision introduced by the previous administration, which only benefited owners of assets adding up to 200,000 euros with a maximum annual discount of 100 euros, thereby excluding some 470,000 owners who paid almost 50 percent of the annual ENFIA revenues. Now the total of 6.4 million property owners will see the burden eased, in many cases by far more than 100 euros each.

According to the new legislation to be voted next week, the changes to the ENFIA tax will apply as of this year. It will introduce a reduction of 30 percent for properties that do not exceed an ‘objective value’ (used for tax purposes) of 60,000 euros, 27 percent for properties in the 60,000-70,000 euro range, 25 percent for assets estimated at between 70,000 and 80,000 euros, 20 percent for the range of 80,000 to 1 million euros and 10 percent for properties valued in excess of 1 million euros.

A further 10 percent reduction on average will apply on all owners from the year 2020. This year’s reduction will be based on the existing objective values.

For example, a taxpayer with an apartment in the northern Athens suburb of Aghia Paraskevi worth 104,650 euros and a holiday home in Rafina in east Attica valued at 52,500 – a total asset value of 157,150 euros – last year paid 667.05 euros in ENFIA and this year will pay 533.64 euros, a 20 percent reduction.

As had already been scheduled by the previous government, pay notices will be sent out next month, with the first of the five installments due by end-September and the last due by end-January 2020.