POMIDA TO FINANCE: SUBSTANTIAL AND PROCEDURAL ISSUES OF RENT REDUCTION AND COMPENSATION OF LANDLORDS!

Also to deal with the bad faith refusal to pay the rents owed by the tenants who made unilateral rent reductions stating that they are allegedly affected and the landlords’ COVID declarations were rejected by AADE, POMIDA asked for the negative answers of AADE, in which it considers that “the lessee was not affected and therefore was not entitled to a rent reduction”, to add that “therefore, the lessee is obliged to pay the entire rent”, in order to avoid disputes and the legal disputes and to initiate the payment of the due rents.         

Finally, POMIDA requests with its letter that the forced rent reduction be finally ended, or if it continues after 30.4.2021, that this be done with a taxable compensation to the owners at 100% of the reduction amount!

The text of the letter is as follows:

To the Minister of Finance Mr.Christos Staikouras,

The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr.Thodoros Skylakakis

The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr.Apostolos Vesyropoulos

The Commander of AADE Mr.Giorgos Pitsili

Herein Athens, 25.4.2021

TOPIC: Substantive and procedural issues of rent reduction and landlord compensation.

Dear Mr. Ministers, Governors,

Following your acceptance of four of our five requests in our letter of 11.4.2021 regarding the taxation of the owners’ income real estate, of our request not to calculate the ENFIA 2021 with increased objective values ​​and the recent payment of 200 million euros to pay off a large part of the compensation due, for which we thank you, with this letter we point out the need for an immediate resolution and following relevant substantive and procedural issues related to the forced rent reduction:

1. To complete all pending corrections, payments and compensation offsets of the lessors even with installments of settled debts.
2. To immediately open the AADE platform for declarations not only March (as provided for in article 3 par. 1 of the GDOU Decree 400/2021), but at the same time January-February 2021.
3. To open all the fields in the AADE applicationto correct the errors of the 2020 period, based on messages from the AADE, which has not been completed until now.

(Indicative errors such as: Leases not shown active while they are, Leases that have as lessees Natural Persons who have set up Legal Entities without having informed the Lessors, a Lessor-legal entity that merged or was absorbed by another and appears in the application as having declared a cessation of operations to AADE, the same for tenant-business that turned into a legal entity and appears in the application as having declared a stoppage of operations to AADE, etc.)

1. That the decision be issued immediately with the closed and affected KADs of April 2021 and that the same procedure of advance payment of the amount to the beneficiaries be applied for this month as well was made for the month of March 2021 based on the “Covid Declaration” that they submitted for the month of February 2021 or are required to submit for the month of March. until the beginning and during the submission of income tax returns.
2. To announce the final solution to the contentious issue ofproprietary compensation to cases when, after the initial lease, a lease has been submitted by the lessee, for subletting the property to a third party (sublessee).
3. In order to address the bad faith refusal to pay the due rents by the tenantswho made unilateral rent reductions stating that they are allegedly affected and the landlords’ COVID declarations were rejected by AADE,we request to the rejection responses of AADEwith which she judges that “the lessee was not affected and was therefore not entitled to a rent reduction”, to add that “therefore the lessee is obliged to pay the full rent”. With this explicit addition that will leave no room for misinterpretation, disputes and legal disputes will be avoided and the payment of the due rents will be initiated.          
4. To be announced when, after Easter, the platform will be opened for retrospective payroll corrections and for initial declarations of the COVID period for both March-October 2020 , in order to apply the case-by-case new regulations of the codified decision A. 1228/2020 with A. 1059/2021, and on the other hand to “cure”, the pending cases of justified omissions and errors.
5. Toadd an annex to the above codified decision with all case-by-case and month-by-month corresponding KAD of affected and closed businesses.  
6. The forced rent reduction should finally end, or if it continues after 30.4.2021, this should be done with taxable compensation to the owners at 100% of the amount of the reduction.
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