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The Greek church reacted sharply after the government announced that it will impose a 20% tax on its incomes from renting its properties, land and the rest of the real estate it owns, as well as a 10% tax on the cash donations and 5% on the real estate donations.

At the end of the day may be the church and the government found the “golden mean” and today the archbishop Ieronim will announce to the special synod the changes to which he agreed with the statesmen. As a compromise to which the church employees agree is the final decision to decrease the initially announced 10% tax on the cash donations to 0,5%. The other tax on the donations from the believers in the form of real state which was initially announced to be 5% also decreases to 0,5%. Most probably there will be a decrease of the taxation coefficient for some other church activities related to its humanitarian goals.

On the other side the deputy Minister of finances Filipos Sahinidis insists on the remaining of the 20% tax on the incomes from renting the real estate property of the church. However the church employees insist that many bishoprics will be left at the edge of survival and that many properties have been bounded by the church and cannot be taxed.

Archbishop Ieronim publicly announced his outrage from the attempt of the statesmen to impose taxes on the property of the church. Today he invited at a meeting representatives of other patriarchates to inform them about the negotiations he is having with the politicians and to decide together what stand they will take. In the conference will take four bishops – a representative of the Ecumenical Bishopric, of the Exarch of the Holly grave in Athens and a representative of the Alexandrian Bishopric which owns a lot of real estate properties in Greece. 

Most probably the church will agree with the reductions in the taxation bill which were made in favor of the church by the financial experts of the government of Papandreou literary just few hours before the special synod.