Probe into short-term rentals
Tax officers to start exhaustive cross-checking of owner and manager data as of March 1
Owners and property managers active in the short-term rental industry will be the focus of tax inspectors aiming to identify those who avoid declaring incomes or declare less than what they receive.
The audits will be in-depth and lengthy, the tax administration reports, and will begin on March 1. This means that in addition to checking the declared incomes of the previous year through smart tools, every month the auditing authorities will search for data from platforms in order to identify those who avoid declaring the details of their bookings in the state’s register.
With this market’s turnover exceeding 2.2 billion euros in 2022, much higher than in 2019, the tax administration plans cross-checks in the rents of short-term leases with the data that taxpayers declare in this year’s tax returns.
Taxpayers who have declared their properties on short-term rental platforms have until February 28 to finalize their property information on the special platform of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) for the year 2022. By the same date they should correct any errors made in provisional statements.
The data will be cross-referenced with that to be received in the coming days from Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group’s Vrbo, as provided for in the cooperation protocol the platforms have signed. In cases where properties have not been declared in the Short-Term Residence Property Register, or were posted online without a clear indication of the short-term residence property registration number, the special operation mark or the unique notification number, the details of the properties and the managers will be sent to the tax office and the owners will be summoned for explanations.
Based on the above, those who have found errors and omissions in the property and income data they declared via the initial declarations should correct them before finalizing the declarations. In all cases of correction of a short-term residence declaration, an amending declaration must be submitted and any error must be corrected.
