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Friday, August 8, 2014

Property Tax Chaos Ends with Greek PM’s Intervention

Errors in the system that computes the new property tax (ENFIA) in Greece have caused chaos in the last few days as homeowners saw that they had to pay up to ten times more after the recent overhaul in the tax system. The Greek government has been trying to correct the errors, while admitting that officials had made serious mistakes in calculating the property tax. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras decreed the value of real estate in order to be in line with the regulations that applied to the previous year. The government admitted that the problems were caused because many experienced officials of the Finance Ministry had been pensioned off. The Greek Finance Minister Gikas Hardouvelis admitted that the new regulations had initially been even harsher. “I took charge of this a month ago and corrected mistakes which you haven’t even seen, affecting almost two million people,” he told the Greek parliament. An announcement by coalition partner PASOK said: “Vice Ppresident and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos exiting the Premier’s office announced that the payment of the first installment of the ENFIA property tax will be delayed by a month so that mistakes may be corrected and the necessary adjustments can be made without burdening and discomforting the citizens. It must be reminded that PASOK had formulated this proposal days ago.”


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com