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Omnibus Tax Bill Finally Ready

taxesGreece’s complicated tax laws – which can change several times in the course of a year – will be revised again under a multi-bill going to Parliament that aims to give the government more powers to collect what’s owed.
The bill has been in the works for a long time and has a number of clauses. It provides for a reduction in fines, offsetting taxpayers’ debts to the state with the state’s own debts to them, an increase in the minimum level of salaries and pensions that can be confiscated, corrections regarding the abolition of the withholding of 20 percent of royalties, and changes to indirect inspection techniques to speed up the monitoring of money forwarding.
The government and the technical team of experts from the country’s international lenders still haven’t reached an agreement on the contentious issue of the capital gains tax, which has frozen the local property market and killed sales this year with likely buyers being pushed away about tax uncertainties.
The government has reportedly decided to forge ahead without the consent of the Troika of the European Union-Internationl Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB.)
The capital gains tax will reportedly be calculated according to the actual sale prices recorded on contracts, rather than based on the so-called objective values, which in many cases are significantly higher, while properties acquired before 1994 will be exempted from the capital gains tax.
The country’s crushing economic crisis has driven property values so far down that a small apartment can be had in some Athens neighborhoods for as little as 5,000 euros ($6,885) but there are still few buyers.
That’s partially because taxes are being assessed on the value of the properties before the crisis instead of their current worth, and property taxes have gone up 700 percent in the past five years, making the tax bill as high as the property’s value in some cases.

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