Washington-based think tank, the Tax Foundation, found that over-taxation was growing in Greece following a study of data from the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD).
The Tax Foundation examined the tax burden on ownership and its ratio to tax revenues of properties in Greece and found that Greek property owners were among Europe’s most heavily burdened by taxes. The study found that most countries both in Europe and globally have a particularly low ratio of property ownership taxes to total tax revenues averaging at 4.6 per cent of all tax takings in the EU. In Greece, the figure was at 8.1 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum, Estonia collects just 0.7 per cent of its tax takings from property, followed by Austria, Lithania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic where the number ranges between 1.3 and 1.4 per cent.
READ MORE: Property owners in Greece facing significant increase in taxation
Greek property taxes had particularly risen following 2007, when the rate of Greece stood at 5.3 per cent against the OECD member average of 5.5 per cent. Since then, the Greek ratio has risen to reach 8.9 per cent in 2013 with the imposition of EETIDE, the property tax collected through power bills. The single property ENFIA tax has also meant an 68 per cent increase in the ratio of property taxes in Greece within just six years. The ENFIA load was somewhat eased up during the government of Antonis Samaras when it was reduced to 8 per cent, however it had grown to 8.4 per cent under the government of Alexis Tsipras in 2004 despite his pre-election promises of eradicating ENFIA, which was initially introduced as a one-off tax burden.
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In a new promise made prior to the July 7 Greek government elections, the SYRIZA government has pledged an average ENFIA reduction of 10 per cent for this year.