POMIDA mentions in its letter that it is the daily recipient of strong protests from property owners from all over the country, both those who flock to the country’s Municipalities every day to receive a certificate of non-debt TAP, especially today for the “tax-free” parental benefits, while they usually have no debt, as well as those who did not benefit from the favorable provisions that were in force until recently, and when they request a certificate of no TAP debt, they are faced with exorbitant amounts of debt after significant fines for retroactive municipal fees for cleaning, lighting and 12-year TAP, for undeclared areas and for non-electrified properties, which they are unable to pay, according to the relevant provisions that have been reinstated automatically in effect after the KEDE platform has stopped functioning and the relevant benefits have expired settings.
The recently decided until 31.12.2021 temporary reopening of the platform for undeclared surfaces, which has not yet been implemented, is a positive measure, but it does not solve the problem , given that the draconian measures will then come into force again and therefore inapplicable in today’s reality, provisions for a 20-year statute of limitations, fines of up to 200% etc.
This is why POMIDA requests with its letter the immediate enactment of the following:
*To immediately abolish the obligation to attach a TAP non-debt certificate to real transactions and to replace it with a simplified electronic process of checking the areas by the notary public.
*To re-open on a permanent basis the online application for property owners’ declarations regarding undeclared surfaces and non-electrified properties, as a permanent channel of communication and service for property owners in the country and the Hellenic Diaspora with the Municipalities where the properties are located their assets.
*To legislate the permanent possibility of declaring undeclared building surfaces and after 31.12.2021, with the imposition of a gradually increasing surcharge on the debts of municipal fees and TAP from 1th of January 2020 onwards, just as it applies to the settlement of arbitrary (Law. 4495/2017).
the time of interruption of the property’s electricity supply.
*The statute of limitations for all kinds of claims by local authorities should be legislatively reinstated in five years, as is now the case for all tax claims of the State, so that citizens can respond to their payment.
*To be defined as a general upper limit a fine of 50% of the main fee/tax for each type of municipal taxes and fees.
The full text of the letter reads as as follows:
To the Minister of the Interior Mr. Makis Voridis
To the Deputy Minister of the Interior Mr. Stelios Petsa
To the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Apostolos Vesyropoulos
To the President of KEDE, Mr. Dimitris Papastergiou
To the Mayor of Athens, Mr. Costas Bakoyannis
Inside Athens, 18.10.2021
SUBJECT: Necessary and urgent changes to the topics that regarding real estate and local authorities
Dear Mr. Ministers, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor
POMIDA is the daily recipient of strong protests from property owners from all over the country, both those who flock to the country’s Municipalities every day to receive a certificate non-debt TAP, while they usually have no debt, as well as those who did not benefit from the favorable provisions that were in force until recently, and when they request certificate of no TAP debt, they are faced with exorbitant amounts of debt after significant fines for retrospective municipal cleaning, lighting and 12-year TAP fees, for undeclared areas and for non-electrified properties, which they are unable to pay, according to the relevant provisions that automatically came back into force after the suspension of the KEDE platform and the end of the relevant favorable arrangements.
The recently decided until 31.12.2021 temporary reopening of the platform for undeclared surfaces, which has not yet been implemented, is a positive measure, but it does not solve the problem, given that subsequently again the draconian and therefore inapplicable in today’s reality, provisions for a 20-year statute of limitations, fines up to 200% etc.
For these reasons, we again recommend to your Ministry for immediate legislation the following:
- REMOVAL OF NON-DUE TAP CERTIFICATE ON ACTUAL TRANSACTIONS. In the year 2014, the only certificate that was abolished to facilitate transactions in real estate was that of non-debt TAP, which unfortunately came back in 2017, under penalty of nullity of the contract, further complicating the transfer of real estate, which already requires piles of documents and long delay! Issuing the said certificate constitutes an unnecessary additional bureaucratic obligation of real estate sellers/donors that delays real transactions, but also causes a significant workload for the revenue services of the OTAs themselves that deal with its issuance, without any further benefit, due to of the almost universal compliance of citizens.
PROPOSAL: To immediately abolish the obligation to attach a certificate non-debt TAP in real transactions and to be replaced by the following simplified electronic procedure, which the Mayor of Athens, Mr. Kostas Bakoyannis, also proposes to you in his recent letter:
a) Permanent access of interested owners and notaries to the real estate data declaration platform and
b) Obligation to declare the differences in square meters in the properties to be transferred, ascertained by the notaries, during the check before the drawing up of the contract, in which case the declaration or not of the Non-Electrified Properties will also be ascertained..
c) Declaration by the notary in a special field of the electronic platform of any changes that arise from the contract and mention in the contract to be drawn up of the registration number of the changes on the platform.
d) Certificate from the Municipality’s revenue service of the corresponding amount of the debt, if it exists. In this way, not only will the Municipality not have a loss of revenue, but it will know the ownership status of the properties within the limits of its jurisdiction.
- STANDARDIZATION OF THE ONLINE APPLICATION OF MUNICIPAL REAL ESTATE TAXES.
Service to citizens regarding their property issues from the country’s Municipalities is currently difficult because due to the current measures against the pandemic, citizens need months to make telephone appointments with the Municipalities’ revenue services for any declaration or receipt of a non-debt certificate. All of the above makes it imperative to immediately and permanently reopen the online application (platform), within the GOV.GR portal, as a permanent channel of communication and service for the property owners of the country and the Hellenic Diaspora with the Municipalities where their assets are located, to which should be added any other services that can be operated online. On this issue, we should emphasize that while a significant effort is being made by the competent bodies of the Government so that citizens are served exclusively electronically by all government services, it is a setback and an unprecedented inconsistency, the interruption of the operation of the online application for the electronic declaration of undeclared surfaces and non-electrified areas, and the return of the declaration with a physical presence at the cash services of the OTAs.
PROPOSAL: To reopen on a permanent basis the online application for the declarations of property owners regarding undeclared surfaces and non-electrified properties, as a permanent channel of communication and service for the property owners of the country and the Hellenic Diaspora with the Municipalities where their assets are located, to which all other services that can be operated online should be gradually added, such as municipal tax information and the possibility of issuing a certificate of non-debt to local authorities. In any case the declaration of only the undeclared areas in said application should be sufficient for any transaction with government agencies or for the conclusion of contracts regardless of when this declaration is cleared, which may take several months until complete.
- DECLARATION OF UNDEclared BUILDING SURFACES AFTER 31.12.2021:Despite the operation of the KEDE platform for a few months and in the midst of a pandemic and quarantine in 2020, a huge part of the built of building surfaces in the country, especially in the periphery, remains undeclared due to the fact that it was not made informative campaign based on the sending of emails by AADE to all property owners in the country and the Greek diaspora. After all, the problem is not going to be solved for everyone with the temporary reopening of the platform until 31.12.2021.
PROPOSAL: To legislate, as necessary and particularly beneficial for local authorities, the permanent possibility of declaring undeclared building surfaces even after 31.12 .2021, with the imposition of a gradually increasing surcharge on the debts of municipal fees and TAP from January 1, 2020 onwards, exactly as it applies to the settlement of arbitrary (Law 4495/2017), namely: For the first half of the delay, a penalty rate of +20% and then +5% for each subsequent half, and with a maximum limit of +50%. An information campaign should be carried out for this measure, by sending emails from the AADE to all property owners in the country and the Greek diaspora.
- BLANK & PROPERTIES NOT SUPPLIED WITH ELECTRICITY:When there is a power cut to a property, the issuing of electricity bills automatically stops. Over time, this creates the reasonable belief among citizens that municipal fees will also stop because of this, as long as they believe in good faith that when the power goes out, the cash services of the relevant Municipality are automatically informed, as it should be and as it is foreseen. That is why very few submit a declaration to the Revenue Services of the Municipalities regarding this during the downtime, as a result, when years later they request a certificate of non-payment of TAP from the Municipality, they are faced with exorbitant retroactive charges of up to 13 years, and with huge surcharges which they are unable to pay, and with further consequences to their detriment that neither the citizens can fulfill, nor the Administration can accepts.
lighting only from the date of its submission to the revenue service, and not from the day of the power outage, contrary to the previous provision of 2005, which exempted the citizen retroactively and regardless of the time of filing the responsible declaration, as the Citizen’s Advocate.
That is why the current legislation is a real trap for the unsuspecting citizens, and for reasons of good administration it is absolutely necessary to change, and the interruption of the power supply automatically interrupts the charging of municipal fees. This is today completely possible and safe for Municipalities with the help of modern technology and the new electronic tax procedures. After all, today, like the connection of electricity from PPC and any other provider, it is done electronically and the charging of municipal fees automatically starts, so the charging of municipal fees must also be automatically stopped, so that at the stage of its interruption electricity, neither the citizen, nor the Revenue Service of the Municipality will need to take any other action.
If the Municipality disputes the status of a property as vacant, it can ask each owner:
- A copy of the E2 of the last five years, from which it can be seen that the property has been declared in income tax as EMPTY.
- For rented properties, a copy of the Resolution Statement Lease of the AADE Real Estate Leases application, which shows when the last lease was terminated.
- Responsible declaration of Law 1599/86 that the space was empty and not used in any way, nor was it supplied with electricity or any other electricity supply.
Finally the Revenue Service in any case of doubt or of a complaint will be able to carry out an autopsy by the Municipality’s bodies in the area for which the certificate is requested, from which it will be possible to establish its use or not, and therefore its exemption or not from municipal fees as vacant.
PROPOSAL: To abolish the obligation of owners to declare vacant and non-electrified properties and to apply automatic exemption from municipal cleaning and lighting fees from the time of the property’s power outage.
- PERIOD OF LIMITATION FOR CLAIMS TO OTAs:Under the pressure of the “troika”, the well-known provision of article 32 of Law 4304/2014 was passed, which specifically legislated for OTAs the extension of the five-year statute of limitations for their claims to twenty years, when it comes to taxes, fees, rights and contributions to the OTAs that arise “due to non-submission by the debtors of the necessary data for their certification or submission of inaccurate or incomplete data or wrongly certified debts”, increased by the fines on the debts of the last five years. However, the State had already begun to gradually reduce the statute of limitations for its tax claims to five years, with the recent decision of the Council of Ministers also regarding traffic taxes and stamps. This constitutes a legislative anomaly, which is completely contrary to the philosophy and principles of the Rule of Law, since the statute of limitations for citizens’ obligations to local authorities, which will reach 20 years in 2030, while it is five years for debts to the State, is not allowed to it is four times that, that is twenty years for the debts to the OTAs, because we are in danger of being led soon to inflated debts, massive confiscations and auctions of properties by the local authorities, especially of the residents of the region and the Expats.
PROPOSAL: The statute of limitations for all kinds of claims of OTAs to legislatively return to the five-year period, as is currently the case for all tax claims of the State, so that citizens can meet their payment.
- DETERMINATION OF 50% AS THE MAXIMUM FINE LIMIT. Today the inaccurate declaration of areas for the imposition of municipal cleaning and lighting fees incurs a 60% fine, the overdue 100% while for the imposition of TAP the fine is 200% of the original debt! These unrealistic percentages of fines are in fact uncollectible since they have the result that with such fines no one would think to declare undeclared surfaces, with the first losers being the OTAs of the country!
PROPOSAL: To establish as a general upper limit of fine 50% of the main fee/tax for each type of municipal taxes and fees.
At your disposal for any clarification and cooperation
Best regards
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The President Stratos I. Paradias Lawyer A.P.-President UIPI |
General Secretary Anastasios G. Vappas “text-align: justify?”> 
The Thessaloniki Property Owners Association actively represents property owners, highlighting their issues and proposing solutions for their resolution, while also providing information and support to its members. ContactLatest NewsCopyright © 2024 ΕΝ.Ι.Α.Θ, All rights reserved. Developed by NWM |
