Greece deactivates over 17,000 short-term rental listings from Airbnb and other platforms

Greece’s independent tax authority AADE has deactivated a total of 17,612 short-term rental listings on digital platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO and others.

The reason for the deactivation is that, according to data received from electronic platforms, short-term rental owners did not receive a property registration number from the Internal Revenue Service, as required by law, or entered a “fake” registration number when registering a property electronically.

Similar measures, with heavy fines and even revocation of the operating license if they fail to comply with the law, will also be applied to luxury villa managers – as was the case with 200 villas that were found in Mykonos being rented out without tax clearance. And also to hotel owners who will be caught not declaring the rent they collect from their customers – as in Kalambaka, where the hotel did not declare income of 1.3 million euros, according to mass media.

With regard to electronic short-term rental platforms, through which about 130,000 properties are rented in Greece, only as a result of cross-checking the data received by the tax service from the companies that manage them, 73,000 property owners were identified who did not declare part of the rent received by them last year and were asked to declare another 102 million euros.

In the near future, AADE is going to sign a new updated memorandum of cooperation with companies operating online short-term rental platforms, based on which the tax authorities will receive real-time information on illegal property owners, receiving all rental data from the platforms.

Practically, this means that by cross-referencing with deductions and declared incomes in the short-term rental property register, AADE will know which property owners and what income have been hidden and, therefore, will proceed to impose fines and administrative sanctions.

Among the measures on the agenda due to serious violations and tax violations is the “eviction” of illegal property owners from online platforms, as has already been done against 17,612 property owners.

Thanks to this new collaboration, it will now be possible to limit or even eliminate tax evasion in the short-term rental market, where taxable turnover has jumped from 62 million euros in 2018 to 530 million euros in 2022.

Short-term rentals have also taken a toll on the problem with long-term rentals, which, in addition to being difficult for Greeks to find, has now skyrocketed in price, starting from 400-500 euros per month for the most basic two-room apartment in the city, which is for ordinary citizens with a salary of 700 euros (and these are about 30% of the population) per month has become prohibitively expensive “pleasure”.

Source link