Greece's Alternate Finance Minister Tryphon Alexiadis announced Wednesday plans to revise the hated Unified Property Ownership Tax (ENFIA).
Syriza originally promised in the party's infamous Thessalonika Program (its veritable pre-election box of pledges) to scrap ENFIA, a steep property tax brought in by the center-right government of Antonis Samaras as a one-off urgent levy, but later made permanent to cover shortfalls in tax revenues.
Yet as this very property tax rakes in an estimated €2.65 billion euros a year, the radical leftist Syriza party has abandoned these plans and will keep the tax in place, with adjustments, until the end of 2016.
But as the Financial Times reports “policy makers failed to account for the fury it would provoke among Greek taxpayers, who have traditionally invested in property as a hedge against the country’s high inflation rates. According to local bankers, about 80 per cent of Greek residents own at least one property, even if they live in rented accommodation. ”
As major Greek daily Kathimerini reports: “[The government] will use existing objective values – property rates used for tax purposes that are typically above market prices – to determine the level of the tax payable by owners, Alternate Finance Minister Tryphon Alexiadis said on Wednesday at a press conference.”
Sources close to the government say that the ministry is trying to shift some of the burden from the main to the supplementary tax, which is payable only by owners whose properties have an objective value of at least €300 thousand thus lifting the burden for low incomes and small property holders, without changing a €2.65 billion euros revenue target.