Naftemporiki — A suspended capital gains tax on property transactions is scheduled to resume as of Jan. 1, 2018, a negative development for Greece’s still depressed real estate market.
The re-imposition of the specific tax is one of the prior actions demanded by Greece’s lenders in the third bailout agreement which is in effect and will expire in August 2018.
The capital gains tax was suspended in 2014 for at least three years, from 2015 until 2017.
The “highlight” of the soon-to-be re-imposed tax is a 15-percent levy on the profit arising from the difference the original purchase price and the sale price.
For instance, if a property is purchased for 100,000 euros and subsequently sold for 120,000 euros, then the 15-percent rate is imposed on the difference of 20,000 euros.
The seller will be liable for this tax, with the buyer charged a transfer fee of 3 percent of the objective tax value of the property (A nominal value estimated by the government and used to calculate transfer and property taxes)
Properties held by the seller before 1995 are to be exempt.
Discounts are envisioned in determining the rate for imposing the capital gains tax on a property, based on the number of years a seller owned the property prior to the sale, reaching up to 60 percent for more than 26 years of ownership.
