‘Tekmiria’ partly suspended
Taxpayers hurt by the pandemic will not have their incomes calculated through their assets
Thousands of taxpayers who suffered during the lockdowns will this year be exempt from the arbitrary estimation of their annual income that the state employs on the basis on their assets, known as “tekmiria,” according to a government decision on Tuesday.
Finance Ministry officials stress that after 1.9 million taxpayers were caught understating their annual income in their tax declarations in 2020 (concerning 2019 incomes), their number would be double that this year (concerning income estimates for 2020); this is because the health crisis led to a drastic drop in professionals’ real incomes, while hundreds of thousands of private sector salary workers had their contracts suspended, during which time they received 534 euros per month from the state instead.
The government’s decision provides for a freeze on the tekmiria system this year for the following categories:
– Employees who had their labor contract suspended last year and those who were among the professional categories objectively affected by the lockdowns at any point in 2020, including entrepreneurs and employees alike.
– Property owners who received reduced rent for the assets they rented out last year, even for a single month, provided they have declared it to the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR).
– Individuals who entered the Syn-Ergasia social security subsidy program at any time last year.
– Seafarers who had their contracts suspended due to the pandemic also qualify for the exemption.
The exemption will apply to taxpayers from the above categories as long as they have not been found to have hidden their incomes in the last couple of years or increased their expenditure in 2020 compared to 2019. In case of the acquisition of any assets through money spent (not via concessions, inheritances etc), the expenditure will have to be justified through income accounted for in the tax declaration.
All other taxpayers will be taxed normally without any discounts to the tekmiria calculation system on the grounds of the pandemic.
