Do you remember Papandreou’s government famous campaign to legalize semi-sheltered spaces (ημιυπαίθριοι) in houses and apartments against a fee of at least some €800? The campaign launched in 2010 by then Environment Minister Tina Birbili and Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou was much praised in 2010 and 2011 as a mean to collect money for the “Green Fund” -that is money to be invested in the protection of environment (lol in a country of 300 billion euro debt) -.
In order to kick ass of property owners to declare their semis-sheltered square meters in their properties Papandreou government had promised that there would be no additional property taxes for the additional square-meters that were to be “legalized” and added to the property space. The tax-free legalization should cover a time of 40 years.
However, the Greek success story reality taught the revenues collecting mechanism a better lesson: now property owners have to add the legalized square meters to their tax declaration (E9) and be charges with extra taxes and municipality fees. Affected are also owners who legalized illegal constructions.
Aim to the Finance Ministry is to collect all the property data in order to impose the so-called “Unified Property Tax” . This tax replaces the regular tax (ETAK) and the “Emergency Property Tax” (ETYED) that was collected via the electricity bills. The UPT was praised as a property tax that would provide relief to property owners as it would burden them with less taxes.
However, adding the “legalized square meters of semi-sheltered spaces or illegal constructions, at least 562,263 property owners may find themselves having to pay more taxes than before.
“One in two property owners does not pay property taxes.
On in two property owners awaits the confiscation order by the tax office in order to pay the money he doesn’t have.” (capital.gr)
In the long statement of the Finance Ministry I read also something like “property owners had to pay contributions to social security IKA for the workers who closed the semi-sheltered space or the illegal construction.” But to tell you the truth I was so shocked that I did not read further if it will be charged retroactive, for future buildings and whatever comes in the mind of the Finance ministry working team….
Everyone in Greece knows that this “semi-space” illegality was an unofficial legal practice for at least three decades in close cooperation of constructors and the auditing mechanisms of the ministries in charge. Everybody knows also that it was the constructors who built these spaces and sold them at full price, even if they were not existing legally on the papers.
Nevertheless, things are different today and those responsible for cheating the property owners are busy with other things: Papandreou jets around the globe complaining that he lost his job due to the economic crisis, Birbili has some well-paid job in an international organization and Papaconstantinou has still to clear the issue of allegedly deleting names of his relatives from the famous Lagarde-list with 2,500 Greek names suspected of tax evasion.
The deadline for the declaration in E9 is tomorrow, Friday, May 30th 2014, and it has to be done electronically via the taxisnet.gr
If you miss the deadline, a punishment fee of 100EUR is due.
This morning I head on private Skai TV that Papandreou government had not promised the tax-free legalization but that no taxes would be demanded retroactive. Blame the media for spreading half or false information in 2010 lol
PS a friendly reminder: Number One enemy of the Troika is the property owner in Greece.
