Countdown starts for the new tax bill
The new tax bill that includes the last but most crucial prior actions required by the third bailout agreement will be put up for public consultation in the latter half of November. This is set to be the toughest set of measures that will likely generate the greatest popular resistance.
Alternate Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiadis will call on political parties and social groups and entities to submit their proposals so that the draft law can be tabled in Parliament for voting in early January next year.
Sources say that the bill will include the incorporation of the solidarity levy in income tax, increasing the number of tax brackets to make the set of rates more progressive, maintaining the tax-free ceiling at 9,550 euros but linking it to the use of credit or debit cards, the provision of prizes as incentives for the users of such cards, and a tax increase on incomes from property rentals.
It will also provide for the abolition of most tax exemptions, tax hikes for farmers, changes to property taxation with the replacement of ENFIA by a new tax as of 2016, and changes to the General Secretariat of Public Revenue, which will be renamed the Hellenic Public Revenues Authority (ELADE), in which the finance minister will have an active role.
