To the Minister of Finance Mr. Christos Staikouras
JOIN: The Minister of Development Mr. Adonis Georgiadis
The Minister of Labor Mr. Yannis Vroutsis
The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr. Apostolos Vesyropoulos
The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr. Theodoros Skylakakis
The Government Representative Mr. Stelios Petsa
Here Athens, 1.4.2020
SUBJECT: Yes to coverage for victims, with reduced rents tax-free!
Dear Minister,
You will certainly remember that very early on when the health crisis broke out, POMIDA was the first to ask you issue of the amount of the professional rents of the businesses that would be forced to stop their operations, and asked to participate in the consultations on how to deal with it, in the context of the social solidarity imposed on everyone by today’s critical situation.
Then you proceeded to issue the PNP of 20/3/2020 which established the mandatory reduction by 40% of the rents of the commercial properties of these businesses as well as of the main residence of their employees, and in fact retroactively from 1.3.2020, without providing any substantial relief for the lessors of these properties, despite our continuous requests.
Already today, the requests to the government, to our organization and to our owner-members for a reduction in the rents of the affected professional-scientific branches, whose operation has not been banned, are already increasing every day. but their activity has been substantially limited.
We hereby declare to you that we would not object to the 40% rent reduction being extended from 1.4.2020 and to the affected professional-scientific branches with the simultaneous condition that all the reduced rents for this period will remain exempt from income tax. Because the tax scale of most of these rents is 15% and an average of the 20%, this will practically mean that the loss of 40% will be distributed in cash directly to the private landlords and after a year or more by 20% to the State. In this way the reduction and in essence a subsidy of the rents that you legislated will be fairly distributed and ultimately funded half by the heavily taxed rental property owners by reducing their next year incomes and the rest by the budget with a perfectly manageable income tax cut, and even backdated by one year . , which today are completely unable to collect common users and pay the insurance contributions of the doormen and their other staff, with understandable consequences.
“text-align: justify?”>Stratos I. Paradias Tasos G. Vappas
