Greece’s finance ministry is working on a draft proposal to replace the current property tax (ENFIA) with a new framework that will include all real estate assets in the country, including rural land and all types of structures.
According to reports, the new property tax framework will not have a tax-free ceiling and will be based on a progressive scale. If the plan actually materializes, then the property tax in its current format will be imposed in 2017 for the last time.
One significant parameter in any ENFIA revision will be to reduce the current objective tax criteria — used by the state to impose yearly tax rates on property — and bring rates more in line with commercial prices, which have collapsed almost across-the-board since the economic meltdown began in 2010. This revision in the framework is also a memorandum-mandated obligation and must be completed by the first half of 2017, although delays — attributed to “technical issues” — point to its completion in the second half of the coming year.
A paradox in the country at present reveals that objective tax criteria in some areas exceed commercial values by as much as 50 percent.
The revenue goal for 2017 remains at 2.65 billion euros, a figure that has little room for deviation in subsequent years amid the quite ambitious fiscal targets demanded by creditors, such as the 3.5-percent primary budget surplus as a percentage of GDP in 2018. As such, a newly unveiled property tax revisions will have to ensure a similar revenue target.
