A portion of the state’s property tax, known as ENFIA in its Greek-language acronym, has been declared illegal, as far as the manner in which it was imposed in four areas around the country.
A portion of the state’s property tax, known as ENFIA in its Greek-language acronym, has been declared illegal, as far as the manner in which it was imposed in four areas around the country.
The decision by the Council of State (CoS), the highest administrative court in Greece, essentially nullifies a ministerial decision dealing with objective tax criteria used to establish the value, and subsequent tax rate, for the Psyhico-Filothei municipality, the Neo Voutza settlement and the extended Delphi-Amfissa municipality.
The first municipality lies within the greater Athens area and is one of a handful of the most exclusive and priciest neighborhoods in the country, with most of the “diplomatic row” in the Greek capital located along its leafy streets. Psyhico and Filothei were previously separate and tiny municipalities next to each other that were merged.
Neo Voutza is an area to the east of Athens proper that includes mostly new residential housing, a portion of which was built without proper licensing. It is a mixed primary home-holiday home district, while Delphi-Amfissa in south-central Greece includes the eponymous archaeological site and the coastal resort town of Amfissa, along with a very large production in olives and olive oil on the plains between mountainous Delphi and the Corinthian Gulf.
A seven-justice CoS session said the horizontal manner in which the unpopular property tax was determined in those districts is illegal. The decision follows a July 2016 ruling that overturned the rates of objective tax criteria as irregular and illegal.
Given the high court verdict the government now has until Dec. 31, 2016 to re-calculate the new objective tax criteria in the specific districts.