With the A1053/2021 decision of the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Apostolos Vesyropoulos, which amended A.1193/24.08.2020, three more procedural issues regarding the payment of compensation to property owners due to reduction of rents.

1. The possibility of compensating the owners not only for the forced reduction at least by forty percent is clarified ( 40%) of the rents due to the mandatory rent reduction measures, but also for the at least thirty percent (30%) optional rent reduction, following an agreement between the lessor and the lessee for the exemption from the payment of part of the total rent. This opens the possibility to clear and pay the compensations for the months of September and October 2020, but also to correct any errors in the relevant declarations, even when the platform is opened for these months as well, as POMIDA insists.
   

Along with the opening of the month of February 2021 in the implementation of the AADE, the decision A.1050/2021 of the Governor of the A.A.D.E. was published in the Official Gazette. Mr. Giorgou Pitsili which amends his decision under POL.1162/2018 entitled “Submission of Real Estate Lease Information Statement using an electronic method of communication via the internet » (B’ 3579).

With the new arrangements, which respond to relevant requests of POMIDA, and which so far lack the possibility to submit initial COVID declarations from March to October 2020, the following important changes were launched, as recorded by the tax technician Mr. Giorgos Christopoulos:

Decision A.1030/2021 of the Ministry of Finance was published in the Official Gazette, which determines the procedure and conditions for the payment of the amount of the compensation of the landlords for the rents January – February 2021, as required by law in the context of dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Article 7 of the amendment of the Ministry of Finance submitted to the draft law entitled “Payroll and human resources issues of the Independent Public Revenue Authority” amends its second article from 20.3.2020 Act of Legislative Content (A’ 68), which was ratified by article 1 of Law 4683/2020 (A’ 83), in order, for the cases of businesses for which measures of suspension or temporary prohibition of operation have been taken for in the month of March 2021, a full exemption from the obligation to pay rent should be provided.

Government Gazette 538B’/11.2.2021 published decision A.1025/2021 of the Deputy Minister of Finance which precisely identifies the categories of businesses whose operation is either prohibited, for the mandatory exemption from the obligation to pay the total rent, or are classified as affected for their mandatory exemption from 40% of the total rent, for the months of January and February 2021. In this decision, after which the opening of the application of the AADE will follow for the submission of the COVID declarations for these months, the following are mentioned:

Law 4772/2021 was published, which includes the new regulation for the reduction of real estate rents for the months of January and February 2021, together with many other urgent fiscal and tax regulations and other provisions.  Then a new ministerial decision will be issued based on the new regulation for rents for the months of January and February 2021, which will determine:

* For which commercial leases of businesses closed by government order will be subject to the 100% rent reduction for those months, and

* For which commercial leases of affected people (which will be and most), but also for employees’ residences, the reduction will remain at 40%. Its most important tax provisions are the following:

Decision A 1003/2021 of the Ministry of Finance was published in the Official Gazette, which provides for the procedure and conditions for the payment by the state to property owners of 50% of the loss from the rent reduction for the months of November and December 2020. The crediting of the corresponding amounts to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries for the month of November is expected to start from Monday, January 18, 2021 and for the month of December from February 15, 2021.