Greece — Taxes

Who becomes a Greek tax resident (and what that triggers)

Tax residence in Greece is not something you apply for. It attaches, and the rest of this chapter follows from it. The default it switches on, as PwC reads the Income Tax Code: worldwide income for tax residents; non-residents taxed only on Greek-source income. Each of the three special regimes below is a priced, partial exit from that one sentence, which is why the regimes get sold hard and the residence tests get explained badly.

The first test is arithmetic. More than 183 days of presence in any rolling twelve-month window makes you a Greek tax resident under art. 4 §2 of the Income Tax Code. Two details in that sentence do the damage. The window rolls, so a stay straddling two Decembers counts as readily as a calendar year does. And residence back-dates to your first day in the country rather than to the day the counter tipped over, so the whole year comes with it.

The second test never counts a day. Art. 4 §1(a) treats as resident anyone with a permanent/main home, habitual abode, or centre of vital interests (personal and economic ties) in Greece, and it operates “without prejudice to” the day count, which makes it an additional sufficient route rather than a fallback. Keep a family home and a business centre in Athens and you can be resident on far fewer than 183 days. Planning built on the day count alone tends to break here first.

One exception runs the other way. A stay exclusively for tourism, medical or therapeutic purposes does not trigger the count at all, up to 365 days, short trips abroad included. It is fragile: one piece of remunerated activity during that stay and the exception is gone. Once residence is settled, the live question is not whether Greece taxes you but which set of rates it uses.

The 2026 income scale: one set of brackets, several sets of rates

Greece does not have an income tax scale in 2026. ITC art. 15 §1(α), as replaced by n.5246/2025 art. 3 §1 with effect from 1 January 2026, makes its own rates conditional in its opening words. What the article actually builds is one set of bracket ceilings, several rate sets: the base rates apply “subject to sub-paragraphs β) to ε)”, four statutory variants that replace the rate on one or more of the first three brackets according to the number of dependent children and the taxpayer’s age.

Two questions therefore decide your rate before a single euro of income is counted: how many dependent children you have, and how old you are. Neither appears in the table most English-language guides print, which is how a young arrival or a large family ends up planning against a bill they will never receive.

Take the default case first, a taxpayer over 30 with no dependent children. The lowest band runs to € 10,000, the ladder then steps at € 20,000, € 30,000 and € 40,000, and the top rate of 44 % begins above € 60,000. That last threshold is the reform’s headline. Until 2026 the top band opened at € 40,000, and anything still saying so is describing last year.

Now the variants, which reach the first three brackets and stop there. With one, two or three dependent children the second bracket falls: 18% with one dependent child, 16% with two, 9% with three — replacing the 20% default on taxable income from €10,000.01 to €20,000. The third bracket does the same thing one step up: 24% with one dependent child, 22% with two, 20% with three, 18% with four, and 2 percentage points less for each further child — replacing the 26% default on taxable income from €20,000.01 to €30,000. Four or more children is not the end of that ladder but a separate provision, and it is the largest exception in the scale: the first two brackets go to 0 %.

Age does the same work without any children at all. A taxpayer aged 25 or under pays 0 % on the first two brackets, and from 26 to 30 the rate is 9 %. Where both rules apply the child rule wins outright. On € 20,000 of taxable income a 24-year-old owes nothing at all, where the default ladder produces a four-figure bill before the art. 16 credit.

None of this is confined to the annual return. n.5246/2025 art. 3 §§4-5 rewrote ITC art. 29 §1 and art. 60 §1 to point at the whole of art. 15 §1 rather than at its table, so the variants reach business profits and monthly payroll withholding too. A parent of three sees the difference in each month’s payslip, not in a refund fifteen months later.

Greece has no zero-rate band. The 9 % starts at the first euro, and what keeps modest incomes untaxed is a credit rather than an allowance: € 777 for a taxpayer with no dependent children, subtracted from the tax computed and rising with each child. It tapers, on salary and pension income only: €20 of credit lost per €1,000 of salary/pension income above €12,000; the taper does NOT apply to taxpayers with 5 or more dependent children.

One category never rides the ladder at all. Rental income has been taxed αυτοτελώς, separately, since 2026, on a scale of its own: €0–12,000 → 15%; €12,000–24,000 → 25%; €24,000–36,000 → 35%; above €36,000 → 45%. Salary does not push rent into a higher band and rent does not push salary. For anyone buying a Greek flat to let, that separation is worth real money, and it previews the larger separation three regimes offer.

Non-dom at €100,000, 7% for pensioners, 50% for relocating workers: what is actually open in 2026

All three regimes are open to new applicants as of tax year 2026, and nothing in the statute closes any of them. Two changed in June 2026 in a way most English trackers have not absorbed; the third is still described with a condition repealed in July 2025.

Article 5A: a flat charge on everything foreign

The deal is blunt. € 100,000 a year discharges Greek tax on all foreign-source income, whatever its size, while Greek-source income stays on the ordinary scale and foreign tax already paid on the covered income cannot be credited here. Relatives come inside at € 20,000 each per year, and while they are inside, Greek gift, inheritance and parental-grant tax does not apply between them.

Entry has two tests: no Greek tax residence in 7 of the previous 8 years, and € 500,000 into Greek real estate, businesses or securities within three years, failing which the regime unwinds retroactively to the entry year. One way past the second test is missing from PwC entirely: investment condition waived for holders of a Greek investor (Golden Visa) residence permit under n.4251/2014 art.16. A permit holder qualifies on the non-residence test alone, which ties the regime straight to the Greek investor visa.

The clock runs 15 years from the first tax year applied for, and the taxpayer can walk away in any year. Payment is where 2026 bites: the charge now falls due on the last working day of December, moved from July by n.5313/2026 art. 94, in force 25 June 2026. PwC’s review, dated 16 February 2026, still prints July and misnames the law as n.5301/2026.

The filing date is a different kind of moving target. It is no longer fixed by statute; delegated to an AADE Governor decision (PwC reports 30 September as the administrative practice, not a binding legal date), so the date governing an application can move without a law changing.

Article 5B: the foreign-pensioner flat rate

7 % sounds like a pension tax and is not. It applies to the whole of the pensioner’s foreign-source income: rents, dividends, capital gains, all of it. Paying it discharges the Greek liability on that income in full, and art. 5Barticle 5Β (pensioner regime)A flat 7% for someone drawing a foreign pension who moves their tax residence to Greece. The rate covers not merely the pension but the whole of their foreign-source income, and payment settles the Greek liability on it. Both conditions bind: no Greek tax residence in five of the previous six years, and arrival from a state with a tax administrative-cooperation agreement in force with Greece. It runs fifteen tax years. §8 expressly preserves treaty entitlements on top.

Entry needs no Greek tax residence in 5 of the previous 6 years, plus a condition 5Aarticle 5Α (non-dom)Greece’s lump-sum regime for high-net-worth arrivals: a single €100,000 a year discharges Greek tax on the whole of a person’s foreign-source income for up to fifteen tax years, with €20,000 more per relative extended into it. Entry requires no Greek tax residence in seven of the previous eight years and a €500,000 investment, waived for holders of the investor residence permit. does not carry: the previous state of tax residence must have an administrative-cooperation-in-tax-matters agreement in force with Greece. That quietly excludes arrivals from several third countries, so the state you leave decides eligibility as much as the one you enter.

Duration is 15 years, and the clock starts the year after the application rather than the application year, the point PwC could not resolve and art. 5B §4 settles. The payment date moved here too: last working day of December. Most English summaries of 5B still print July, and for tax year 2026 that is not a difference of presentation, it is wrong.

Article 5C: the relocation exemption, and two things almost everyone gets wrong

The benefit is 50 % of Greek employment income exempt from income tax and the special solidarity levy, for 7 years with no extension available; the statute says so in terms. A second benefit rides along unadvertised: deemed income on the taxpayer’s home and car is disapplied, under art. 33 περ. ι) rather than art. 5Γarticle 5Γ (relocation relief)A relief exempting half the Greek employment or sole-trader income of a professional who moves their tax residence to Greece, for seven tax years with no extension. It requires no Greek tax residence in five of the previous six years, arrival from the EU, the EEA or a state with an administrative-cooperation agreement, and — the condition that rules out remote work for a foreign employer — a Greek employer or the Greek permanent establishment of a foreign one. itself.

Eligibility turns on four cumulative conditions: not a Greek tax resident in 5 of the previous 6 years; transfer of tax residence from an EU/EEA state or a state with a tax administrative-cooperation agreement in force with Greece; services performed in Greece under an employment relationship with a GREEK legal person or entity, or with a Greek permanent establishment of a foreign company; and a declared intention to remain in Greece at least 2 years.

There is no longer a new-job requirement, whatever secondary summaries say. It was art. 5Γ §6, and n.5222/2025 art. 206 §7(β) repealed it on 28 July 2025, with §8 extending the repeal to pending applications. PwC’s February 2026 page still carries it. Someone hired into a post another employee vacated is eligible, and a reader who believes otherwise walks away from a 50 % exemption for nothing.

Nor is this a digital-nomad regime, however often it is sold as one. Condition (γ) requires an employment relationship with a Greek legal person or entity, or with a Greek permanent establishment of a foreign company, so remote work for a foreign employer with no Greek presence falls outside it. The only route open to a self-employed arrival is §7, applying the article by analogy to someone starting an individual business activity in Greece.

5C keeps the one application deadline in this chapter that is still law rather than practice: service taken up on or before 2 July of a year → apply for that year, by the end of that year (or in the following year, to be judged for that following year); service taken up after 2 July → apply for the NEXT year, by the end of that next year. Decision within 60 days; supporting documents filed up to 31 March of the year after the application reverse a rejection made for missing documents. Set that against 5A and 5B, whose statutory dates were deleted and handed to AADEΑΑΔΕ / AADEThe Independent Authority for Public Revenue, Greece’s tax administration. It issues the ΑΦΜ, runs the short-term-rental property registry, publishes the objective-value tables that floor property tax bases, and since 2026 fixes by its Governor’s decision deadlines that used to sit in statute — the article 5Α and 5Β application dates among them., and the lesson is uncomfortable: for two of the three regimes, the date you must diarise is written in no statute you can read.

Regime 5C, operative text: Ν. 4172/2013 art. 5Γ, consolidated. In summary, 50% income-tax and solidarity-levy exemption on Greek-source employment income, for a maximum of 7 total tax years, conditional on a declared minimum 2-year stay and a 5-of-6-year prior non-residence test.

Payroll, self-employment, and the income floor you cannot talk your way under

On a Greek payslip the employee’s own social-security line is 13.37 % and the employer adds 21.79 %. Both figures come through PwC as the standard private-sector split rather than as a universal Greek number: contributions are fund-dependent, and no first-party e-EFKAe-ΕΦΚΑThe unified social insurance fund, which since 2017 has collected every social contribution — pension, health, unemployment, lump-sum — from employers, employees and the self-employed, and passes the health share to ΕΟΠΥΥ. Registering with e-ΕΦΚΑ through work or self-employment, not registering as a resident, is what actually creates Greek health cover. page states this pair. They stop at a ceiling on insurable earnings of € 7,761.94 a month (e-EFKA Circular 4/2026), so above that line the effective rate falls with every extra euro. The ceiling tracks consumer prices only to the end of 2026; from 2027 it moves with a wage index instead.

Self-employment runs on a different principle, and it is the one that catches arrivals. Contributions are not a percentage of anything. They are six fixed monthly classes, from € 250.77 to € 675.87, and the contributor picks one. A freelancer who invoices nothing for a whole year still owes the class they sit in, plus a mandatory €10 a month for unemployment insurance.

The tax side puts a second floor underneath. Art. 28A taxes a sole trader on a presumed minimum income, built from the minimum wage, escalating with years of activity and topped up by payroll and turnover components, regardless of what the business actually earned. It is capped at € 50,000. It is also rebuttable, on listed grounds such as illness, military service or force majeure, or by requesting a tax audit, which is a route people genuinely take.

Between the fixed class and the presumed income, Greece has built a floor under freelancing that a bad year does not lower. That is the single largest difference between arriving as an employee and arriving as a sole trader, and it is the one most often discovered after the first January. Both floors are annual figures, republished by e-EFKA circular each year, so a contribution quoted from last year is rarely the one you owe. Capital income, by contrast, is handled with a much lighter touch.

Dividends, capital gains, companies, VAT, and the ENFIA property tax

Investment income is withheld at source, and for an individual that is usually the end of the matter. Dividends are taxed at 5 %, one of the lowest rates in the EU. Interest is 15 %, dropping to 5 % on listed corporate bonds held by Greek residents, with government bonds and T-bills exempt in individual hands. Royalties are 20 % (ITC art. 40).

Capital gains are where summaries of Greece go wrong, because two unrelated mechanisms keep getting merged into one sentence. Securities first. Art. 42 §1 is a closed list, and listed shares are on it only where the seller holds at least 0.5 % of the share capital; below that stake the gain is permanently exempt, not suspended. Above it, and for unlisted shares, partnership interests, bonds and derivatives, the rate is 15 %, and only for instruments acquired from 1 January 2009.

Property is the other mechanism entirely. ITC art. 41, which taxes gains on transfers of immovable property, is suspended to the end of December 2026 by art. 72 §34. It has been rolled forward repeatedly since 2015 and has never once been allowed to bite, which is not the same thing as abolition. Note also what is missing: crypto-assets are not on the art. 42 list, Greece publishes no crypto-specific rate, and this chapter states none.

Companies and consumption are simpler. Corporate income tax is 22 % flat under art. 58 §1(α), with no municipal or regional layer on top and a higher rate reserved for credit institutions inside the art. 27A deferred-tax regime. VAT stands at 24 %, with reduced bands beneath it.

Buying is taxed on the way in. Transfer taxΦΜΑ (real-estate transfer tax)The transfer tax the buyer pays before the deed is signed at the notary. Its base is not the sale price as such but whichever is higher, the contract price or the property’s objective value. It applies to purchases outside the VAT net — in practice, essentially the whole resale market. is 3 % of the taxable value under Property Tax CodeΚώδικας Φορολογίας Περιουσίας (n. 5219/2025)The Property Tax Code, in force since 18 July 2025, which brought ΕΝΦΙΑ, real-estate transfer tax and inheritance, gift and parental-grant tax into a single framework. It displaced n. 4223/2013 as the basis of ΕΝΦΙΑ and n. 1587/1950 as the basis of transfer tax, so any guide still citing those is describing the pre-mid-2025 position. art. 27 §1, and §5 adds a municipal charge of 3 % levied on the tax itself rather than on the value, which is where the slightly higher effective figure in the property chapter comes from. Same tax, two presentations. The article also cuts the charge to a quarter for distributions among co-owners and halves it for mergers and expropriations.

ENFIAΕΝΦΙΑ / ENFIAThe unified property ownership tax, levied since 2014 and, since July 2025, under the Property Tax Code. No separate return is filed: it is assessed electronically from the holdings shown in the E9 declaration on 1 January of the tax year, as a main tax per property plus a surcharge where the owner’s aggregate property value passes a set threshold., the annual property tax, carries one relief bigger than its headline. A main residence in a settlement of up to 1,500 inhabitants at the latest census gets 50 % off in 2026, under a property-value cap. The limit rises to 1,700 inhabitants in Western Macedonia, the Regional Unit of Evros and border-adjacent municipalities of Central Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and Epirus. Attica is excluded, with the Regional Unit of Islands carved back in. And 2026 is only a bridge: the same properties become fully exempt from 2027.

Filing deadlines, the first-year cash squeeze, and the one treaty status we can prove

Returns are filed electronically, and PwC puts the window at 15 March to 15 July. Ministerial decisions extend it most years, so read it as the statutory shape rather than as a date to rely on.

The first year is the expensive one, for a structural reason. PwC puts the advance payment at 55 % of the current year’s tax, due alongside the balance, on income not withheld at source: rent, freelance fees, business profits. It is reduced in a first filing year, but the arithmetic still lands roughly a year and a half of tax in one payment.

Then the spending quota, which surprises people who treat card use as a convenience. On PwC’s statement of the rule: 30% of actual salary/pension/business/rental income must be spent through electronic means, capped at €20,000; 22% of any shortfall is ADDED to the tax bill. Greece does not merely permit electronic payment, it prices the failure to use it.

Relief for foreign tax is a domestic mechanism before it is a treaty question. Foreign tax is credited only if the taxpayer files as a Greek tax resident, submits apostilled and officially Greek-translated original foreign tax documents, and the foreign state had taxing rights; capped at the Greek tax attributable to that income. The apostille and the sworn translation are the real obstacle rather than the arithmetic: a foreign payslip on its own does not clear the bar.

Whether a treaty adds anything on top depends on the state you are leaving, and this chapter states a bilateral status only where a primary source was opened. Exactly one was: the Greece-Russia Convention of 26.06.2000 entered into force 13.12.2007, applies from 01.01.2008, and remains in force — it has NOT been denounced. Russia unilaterally suspended articles 5 to 22 and 24 of it from 08.08.2023 by Presidential Decree No. 585; Greece protested by note of 17.11.2023 No. 1153ΔΙΜ/ΑΠ 1307 and has notified no specific counter-measures since.

The article-level split matters more than the word “suspended”. Inside the suspended range sit dividends, interest, royalties, capital gains, employment income and pensions, that last one landing squarely on the foreign pensioner article 5B courts. Still operative are the residence article with its tie-breaker, the relief article, the mutual agreement procedure and exchange of information. The MLI also modifies the Convention, so a principal-purpose test applies to whatever remains.

Two framings to refuse. Treaty entitlement follows tax residence and never a passport: a Russian passport holder resident in Germany is a German treaty resident for Greek purposes. And the Russian position stands for Russia alone. For every other partner state this chapter states nothing, because Greece’s own treaty list is not retrievable by any automated client.

One last trap on the way out. Article 43A, the special solidarity contribution, is still printed in the Income Tax Code with its old scale, because the repeal lives in the transitional art. 72 §74 rather than in 43A itself. It is abolished for all income earned from 1 January 2023 onward, and nothing is withheld for it today, whatever old guides and older payroll software imply.

For the wider frame: Greek tax revenue was 41.7 % of GDP in 2024, a little above the EU27 average (Eurostat, gov_10a_taxag). Greece is neither the low-tax jurisdiction its regimes suggest nor the fiscal outlier of its reputation. It is an ordinary European tax state with three unusually generous side doors.

Which door fits, if any, turns on prior residence and dates more than on arithmetic. The Greece checklist sets out what to gather before a first Greek filing; the quiz weighs Greece against the alternatives.

Sources: Income Tax Code n.4172/2013 as consolidated (arts 4, 5A, 5B, 5Γ, 15, 16, 28A, 33, 40-43, 58, 72), n.5222/2025, n.5246/2025, n.5313/2026 (ΦΕΚ Α’ 102/25.06.2026), Property Tax Code n.5219/2025, VAT Code n.5144/2024, e-EFKA Circulars 4/2026 and 6/2026, Eurostat gov_10a_taxag, PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries (16 February 2026), Russian Ministry of Finance treaty-status table. Verified 18 August 2026.

Frequently asked

What is the top income tax rate in Greece in 2026?▾

44 %, on income above € 60,000, and that threshold is new: until the 2026 reform the top band opened at € 40,000. No variant of the scale reaches it, so the top rate is identical for every taxpayer whatever their age or family. Below it the ladder steps through five bands, and the first three rates are not fixed.

Does Greece really have one income tax scale in 2026?▾

No. The bracket ceilings are identical for everyone; the rates on the first three brackets are not. With one, two or three children the second bracket becomes 18% with one dependent child, 16% with two, 9% with three — replacing the 20% default on taxable income from €10,000.01 to €20,000, and the third becomes 24% with one dependent child, 22% with two, 20% with three, 18% with four, and 2 percentage points less for each further child — replacing the 26% default on taxable income from €20,000.01 to €30,000. With four or more, the first two brackets drop to 0 %. Age works alone: 0 % to age 25, 9 % from 26 to 30.

Is Greece’s €100,000 non-dom regime still open to new applicants in 2026?▾

Yes as of this research pass: nothing in the statute closes it, and the charge stands at € 100,000 a year for 15 years. The filing date is the moving part. It is no longer fixed by statute; delegated to an AADE Governor decision (PwC reports 30 September as the administrative practice, not a binding legal date), so the date that governs an application is administrative, and the current AADE decision is worth checking before a timeline is built around September.

How does Greece’s 7% flat tax for foreign pensioners work?▾

7 % applies to the whole of a foreign pensioner’s foreign-source income, not only the pension, and paying it settles the Greek liability on all of it. It runs 15 years, counted from the year after the application rather than the application year. The condition that catches people is not about Greece at all: the previous state of tax residence must have an administrative-cooperation-in-tax-matters agreement in force with Greece.

Do Greek freelancers pay social security as a percentage of income?▾

No. Contributions run in six fixed monthly classes, from € 250.77 to € 675.87, chosen by the contributor, and they fall due whether or not the business invoiced anything. A €10 monthly unemployment levy sits on top. The tax side adds a second floor: art. 28A taxes a presumed minimum income regardless of actual earnings, capped at € 50,000.

When do I become a Greek tax resident?▾

On either of two independent tests. Spend more than 183 days in Greece in any rolling twelve months and residence attaches, back-dated to your first day of presence. Or, on far fewer days, if you have a permanent/main home, habitual abode, or centre of vital interests (personal and economic ties) in Greece. Stays purely for tourism or medical treatment are excepted up to 365 days, and any paid work destroys that exception.

Is capital gains tax on property sales suspended in Greece?▾

Yes, to the end of December 2026. What is suspended is ITC art. 41, the tax on gains from transferring immovable property, and nothing else: share gains sit under a separate article with a separate logic. The suspension has been rolled forward since 2015 without being made permanent, so a 2027 sale rests on another extension.

Can I use a Greek double tax treaty to avoid paying twice?▾

Greece’s own credit mechanism works without one: foreign tax is credited only if the taxpayer files as a Greek tax resident, submits apostilled and officially Greek-translated original foreign tax documents, and the foreign state had taxing rights; capped at the Greek tax attributable to that income. Whether a treaty adds to that depends on your state of residence, and this chapter states a bilateral status only where a primary source was opened. Exactly one was: the Greece-Russia Convention of 26.06.2000 entered into force 13.12.2007, applies from 01.01.2008, and remains in force — it has NOT been denounced. Russia unilaterally suspended articles 5 to 22 and 24 of it from 08.08.2023 by Presidential Decree No. 585; Greece protested by note of 17.11.2023 No. 1153ΔΙΜ/ΑΠ 1307 and has notified no specific counter-measures since. Entitlement follows tax residence, never a passport.

Related chapters

• 🏠PropertyBuying, owning, paying tax on a home
• 🏦BankingAccounts, SWIFT, residency rules
• 💶Cost of livingRent, groceries, services