Thousands of property owners who rented out homes through short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb, Booking and Vrbo have received new electronic notices from Greece’s tax authority, after discrepancies were detected between the income they declared and the data submitted by the platforms.
The notices concern rental income from the years 2020 to 2023 and mark a new round of checks on Greece’s short-term rental market.
In many cases, the issue does not necessarily appear to involve undeclared income, but the way the figures were calculated and reported. A key point of confusion concerns platform commissions. Many owners declared the net amount that was eventually transferred to their bank account, after Airbnb, Booking or other platforms had deducted fees and commissions.
However, Greece’s Independent Authority for Public Revenue appears to be comparing those declarations with the gross amounts reported by the platforms, which include the commissions. As a result, the difference may be treated by the tax authorities as undeclared income.
In practice, an owner may have recorded total bookings worth €10,000 but received €8,800 after platform deductions. If only the €8,800 was declared, the tax authority may identify a €1,200 discrepancy and ask for explanations or an amended tax return.
The critical point is that, under tax rules, platform commissions are not deducted from property income, a position that effectively supports the tax authority’s approach.
Taxpayers who receive such notices are advised not to ignore them. They should retrieve detailed annual records from the platforms, including bookings, payouts and commissions, for each year under review. They should then compare those figures with the amounts declared in their E2 and E1 tax forms in order to identify exactly where the discrepancy has occurred.
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