POMIDA proposes tax reductions for cheaper rents

In the logic that rental prices are high due to a lack of supply, the Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners (POMIDA) emphasizes that “houses exist, but their supply has not decreased due to the refusal, but due to the inability of their owners to renovate them, from the fact that for 15 years no houses were built with compensation, due to the recklessness and impunity of a small but active portion of so-called “tenants” who settle in the houses with a pre-determined plan to pay absolutely nothing, and escape with impunity to the residence of their next victim”.

According to the owners, this is one of the reasons why some have been forced to turn to short-term renting which, despite the costs and additional work involved, ensures that the rent is collected.

Bring order

But instead of a regulatory framework or tax breather to refurbish foreclosed homes and bring them back onto the market, they see leaked reports of raising the GPA on vacant homes and limiting the total length of short-term rentals to 60-90 days per year .

To this they reply that imposing a punitively increased ENFIA on this large class of economically weak homeowners, because they cannot renovate the homes, will drive them into desperation and even force them to sell them before they lose them in the ensuing foreclosures; noting that “what will skyrocket will not be their supply of rent, but their rage and indignation against such an inhuman measure of fiscal brutality.”

On the table

It is recalled that the measures that have fallen on the table and towards which the government seems to be oriented are:

* A new scale for the taxation of short-term rental income, with a first rate of 22%, while a second scenario envisages the reduction of rates for owners who have the properties on long-term lease.

* Imposing a limit on the period of time that a property can be rented out on a short-term basis to 60 or 90 days, depending on the area.

* A combination of taxation and housing rental period. For those who rent them for more days, the tax rate will increase.

Requests

The owners’ answer is POMIDA’s proposal for a three-year exemption from income tax, as it believes that this is the only way to “open up” all the available closed houses, whoever they belong to “without exclusion, income or other criteria, and not with half measures or with a “punitive” ENFIA to the owners of the old closed apartments!”. They point out that if the government wants to help tenants it should reduce income tax and ENFIA and not consider raising them. And first of all to reduce the scale of the income tax, which was not reduced as was done with the other scales, and which, combined with ENFIA and all the above, acts as a deterrent to renovating the tens of thousands of apartments in the old districts of Athens and of Thessaloniki and to be rented out to young couples who are anxiously looking for homes.