A report in Haniotika Nea on 10th February summarises coming changes in the rules for rental payments, which are part of a government drive to reduce tax evasion in the property sector. The move is intended to outlaw under-the-table cash transactions and make it easer for the tax authorities to check rental incomes declared by property owners against the actual rentals paid by tenants. While the changes, as first announced in December 2025, were originally intended to apply from 1st January of this year, it would appear that the ruling has been delayed and will now apply from the beginning of April.
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Government pursues tax evasion in the rental sector
Greece’s financial success
On Thursday 11th December, Greece’s Minister of Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis was elected President of the Eurogroup – the informal meeting of EU finance ministers which guides the Union’s economic policy. As Minister of Digital Governance, Mr Pierrakakis oversaw the rapid and successful digitisation of government services in the first Mitsotakis administration of 2019-23, and apart from being a recognition of his personal qualities, the choice is a remarkable turnaround for a country which only ten years ago was under strong pressure from the same Eurogroup – and particularly the German Finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble – to leave the euro. That did not happen and following a period of supervision by the EFSF/ESM and the IMF, which made large loans to help the country through its financial crisis, Greece’s financial position has gradually improved to the point where it was able make early repayments of the more expensive IMF loans by 2022, and anticipates fully paying off the first bailout loans by 2031, 10 years ahead of schedule.
Further steps against tax evasion
Following the recent government reshuffle, on 21st March the newly appointed Finance minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis paid a first visit to the Independent Authority for Public Income (AADE) for a working meeting with its director Giorgos Pitsilis.
Continue readingCard payments in the fight against tax evasion
The crisis which brought Greece to the brink of bankruptcy in 2009 and onwards was in part due to the inability of successive governments to take in enough tax to cover their costs. More recently, at the end of 2023, the population’s total outstanding debt to the public purse was estimated to be €80 billion, or 20 per cent of the national debt (the latter, at around €400 billion or 162% of GDP for the same year, being the 4th highest in the world in percentage terms). But this was only the figure for established debts, many of which will have been for unpaid income tax. Equally, if not more important, is the potential tax due on undeclared incomes.
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