Finance ministry teams are feverishly preparing this year’s new real estate valuations and the resulting changes in real estate taxes, which will be higher for over one million property owners.
Finance Minister Euclid Tskalatos told SYRIZA MPs yesterday that 67 percent of property owners will not face a higher property tax than last year due to the new real estate valuations.
Tsakalotos said that 18 percent of property owners will have a slight real estate tax reduction, but 15 percent, an estimated one million, will suffer a real estate tax hike.
Properties in working class neighbourhoods (where tax valuations were low), tourist areas, and the islands will be those that will be burdened from the tax hikes.
Effectively, the new valuations shift the existing overall tax burden, as the 2.65bn euro target for all overall, annual real estate tax revenues nationwide remains the same.
The new tax rates will apply immediately, and will not be phased in over two or three years, as the government had initially planned.
The real estate tax increases will also bring a higher supplementary real estate tax for property owners whose aggregate real estate holdings are 200,000 euros or more in value.
Meanwhile, Tsakalotos reiterated to his party’s MPs that the government has no intention of requesting a post-bailout precautionary credit line.
Dinos Siomopoulos
