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Greek society is outraged after the secret introduction in Parliament of the bill for changes in the taxation of patrimonial estates. After the implementation of the planned tax reform, the inheritance tax will be calculated on a certain scale, which the PASOK government has not yet presented officially for public discussion. Up to now at the receipt of the inheritance of a property valued at up to 95 thousand Euro, citizens did not pay tax. For inherited property of over 95 thousand Euro the tax is 1% of its tax value.

Experts claim that most probably the nontaxable value of the inherited property will increase to 200 thousand euro. Under the new conditions, property with higher nontaxable value will be taxed by a scale according to which the higher the price of the property the higher the tax will be. So if the tax value of an apartment is 250 thousand Euro, after January 8, 2010 at the moment of disposal of the property the heir has to pay 3125 Euro. Before the changes of the new government the tax for the same apartment would be twice smaller – 1550 Euro. In the cases when the apartment in question is valued at 300 thousand Euro the size of the tax gets to be four times bigger or exactly 8125 Euro, while up to now it would have been 2050 Euro. The only ones favored after the introduction of the new bill will be the heirs who will not pay anything after the increase of the nontaxable minimum – those who inherit properties valued over 95 thousand Euro and less than 200 thousand Euro.

The decision of the Prime Minister George Papandreou to introduce late in the evening at closed doors in the Parliament the new bill, which in its essence will seriously increase the tax burden on the Greek citizens, was highly condemned. The chairman of the Athens chamber of commerce and industry Konstantinos Michalos expressed his dissatisfaction of the actions of the government: “The government demonstrated moral and political scarcity. Besides the economic crisis, not the common people will be burdened by the additional weight of the increased inheritance tax. This directly contradicts the pre-election promises of the leaders of PASOK. The businesses in our country are calling Prime Minister George Papandreou and his economic advisers to change their tactics and follow the promises they made.”

The governmental spokesman Georgios Petalotis defended the actions of the government by saying: “The changes in the current inheritance tax law will not affect the lower and middle layers of the society. This bill was included in our pre-election program and its goal is to lead to a more fair tax system.”