In total, the government plans to allocate the amount of 263 million to the above owners, in order to limit the burdens of the ENFIA from the new year. But instead of abolishing ENFIA or changing its form, as the government had promised, owners of small real estate who currently pay 1.4 billion to the State will see the tax they pay each year slightly reduced. Even worse is the news for the middle class, as no reduction is foreseen, despite the fact that they currently pay 48% of the GNI. According to the data, 3.488 million owners with individual assets up to 60,000 euros will benefit by 45-50 euros on average (reduction of up to 30%), 1 million owners with assets from 60,000 to 100,000 euros will gain 60-70 euros (reduction of up to 21%) and those with assets between 100,000 and 150,000 euros will gain 45-50 euros (reduction of 9.5%). Those with assets between 150,000 and 200,000 euros will save a total of 6 million euros! Essentially, 752,000 owners are left out of relief for 2019, who pay 1.3 billion.
According to Mr. Stratos Paradia, President of the Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners, “instead of its abolition or reduction, or even the fair and balanced substantial reduction of ENFIA for all taxpayers, because they all need it, today the path of exclusion is chosen for those who still bear the biggest burden, and the tax reduction of approximately 48 euros on average for the rest. However, restarting the economy cannot be done with such “mirrors and beads for natives”, but with substantial tax relief measures for real estate, which will once again create employment in the construction and renovation industry and in all related professions”.
Also, Mr. Paradias argues that the abolition of the supplementary ENFIA would lead to the stimulation of GDP by approximately 1.35 billion per year for the period 2018-2022, the creation of approximately 32,000 jobs per year, an increase in the disposable income of households and a significant increase in consumption. This was found by the IOBE study that was made public a few days ago, as the additional tax works as a deterrent for all real estate investments, which would yield multiple revenues from ENFIA.
However, despite the reductions that have been announced, the government has undertaken in 2019 and also in 2020 to readjust the objective values. It is noted that the readjustment of the objective values in both 2019 and 2020 was announced by the Commission’s compliance report (last June), not taking into account the values announced by the government, apparently considering that they do not correspond to reality. As highlighted in the compliance report, the Greek authorities have proceeded with a major exercise of changes in objective values, with the aim of gradually equating them with market prices. In fact, the Greek authorities have committed to gradually readjust the objective values to a percentage of at least 50% of the remaining difference with the commercial values in 2019 and to fully align them in 2020. This means that in the next two years there will also be significant changes in ENFIA .
