Greece’s tax bureau has launched a veritable safari to locate homeowners who rent property via Airbnb or Booking platforms and do not declare income, newgreektv.com reports.
Competent authorities have launched the chase posing as customers trying to locate persons that have not declared their properties while renting them.
Information has shown that controls have already started in areas where the Airbnb phenomenon is rising, with tax officials approaching landlords or house managers as customers.
In fact, the approach often starts with trying to achieve a better price by not declaring the rental of real estate.
Inspection by the Tax Office continues, nevertheless, by cross-indexing the data from the electronic platform and the remittances that have been paid. The owners of the properties are then summoned by the tax office to justify the amounts of remittances they have received from Airbnb for the tourist exploitation of their property.
All contracts completed from 1 January 2018 onwards must be declared by law. Otherwise, real estate managers are threatened with fines of up to € 5,000.
Yet, the short-term rental of real estate has flourished in Athens in recent years, and today there are more than 6,500 advertisements online.
According to Inside Airbnb, there are nowadays 5,127 listings in the Greek capital at an average nightly rate of 55 euros with 4,268 or 83.2 percent ragarding entire houses or apartments, 15.8 percent (808) private rooms and only 1 percent (51) shared rooms.
From the data provided by the company, it is deduced that approximately 500,000 nights are spent in Athens on airbnb rentals on an annual basis.
Read more at insideairbnb.com
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Photo Source: pixabay.com
