Credited on Maundy Thursday to the bank accounts of 5,238property owners, a total amount of 10.2 million euros, with the which the State covers up to 80% of the rent reduction for the 1st quarter of 2021. As announced by the Ministry of Finance, for the reduced rents for the period March 2020 – March 2021 offsets have been made with taxes and money payments totaling more than 395 million euros.

In the run-up phase, it seems that the regime of forced rent reductions due to the pandemic is entering. The Ministry of Finance announced in its announcement the regulation that will be in effect for the month of May, which differs according to the chapter that caused the most protests from property owners. In particular, the announcement states that the regulation that provides for a full rent exemption (100%) from the obligation to pay rent for businesses to which restrictive measures are applied will continue for the month of May.

ENFIA IS IRREVOCABLE FOR 2021

For the immediate payment of compensations amounting to 200,000,000 euros to the real estate lessors who suffered cuts in their rents, the Minister of Finance Mr.Christos Staikouras informed the president of POMIDA, Mr. Stratos Paradia. Also, the Minister informed the president about the acceptance of POMIDA’s request to postpone the taxation of uncollected rents for 2020 with the only condition being the notification of an out-of-court summons to the debtor tenants, i.e. without requiring the issuance of a court decision, an order for the payment of rent, or even filing a tenancy lawsuit in the competent court. 

From various mainly touristic areas of the country, we have been receiving constant complaints from homeowners who rent them out to hotel and room-for-hire employees, who are not suspended from work, but subsidized as unemployed, that their tenants proceed to arbitrarily reduce their rents. Professionals of various categories also claim a rent reduction for the rents of their homes. In view of the above, POMIDA clarifies the following:

From today Tuesday evening the compensations for the total rent exemptions of last January will start to be credited to the bank accounts of the owners,while from tomorrow, Wednesday , the outstanding amounts for the reduced rents for the months of November and December 2020 will begin to be paid.

This was assured to the President of POMIDA by the competent Deputy Minister Finance Mr. Apostolos Vesyropoulos in today’s communication, adding that the payments that will be made will exceed 70 million euros and will concern more than 150,000 TINs, while after the stage of corrections, the liquidation and realization will follow of offsets with tax obligations, compensations for the months March to October 2020. He also informed him that on Friday 19.3, 8 million euros were paid to 119,440 landlords for compensations for partial reductions (40%) of January rents, which will continue today.    

Another procedural issue, which however hindered the awarding and payment of compensations to many thousands of shop owners throughout the country, was resolved through the continuous negotiations and cooperation of POMIDA with AADE, while in the coming days the resolution of other problems than those pointed out by POMIDA in its reports is expected, also proposing the appropriate solutions. 

Another request of POMIDA started to be implemented by AADE. As the journalist Mr. Prokopis Hatzinikolaou states in his article on the financial portal www.capital.gr , the AADE has started sending reply emails to 79,000 tax-paying property landlords who were “cut off” from compensation for “cut” rents, who although they had submitted their Covid declarations on time for reduced rents since March when the outbreak broke out pandemic until August 2020, they have not been compensated to date by the state, mainly due to false statements by their tenants that they are supposedly entitled to a reduction in their professional or residential rent as allegedly affected…

No more “blind dates” in the COVID statements! The AADE platform for submitting COVID declarations for the month of January 2021 was opened tonight with significantly improved interactivity, as POMIDA had proposed three months ago, i.e. with simultaneous confirmation of their validity data, so as not to repeat the phenomena of submitting invalid declarations due to false claims by a portion of the tenants, or other errors when submitting them. According to AADE’s announcement, the platform will remain open for January’s COVID declarations until March 1st.

The response of the Minister of Employment, Mr. Kostis Hatzidakis, to the complaint made by POMIDA at its 38th Congress about virtual work suspensions that are announced long after the period that they allegedly concern, with the aim of reducing residential rents, but also to collect the foreseen compensations from the State. In fact, in these cases, the right to abatement is announced to the lessor at a time when, as a rule, the deadline for submitting a COVID declaration has expired, as a result of which the right to collect the legal compensation is lost, while the tenant unilaterally and arbitrarily withholds the abatement from the next rents.