Intro

(I intended to write this back in 2023 but it remained a draft for quite a while. I’ve decided to publish it now.)

This is another blog in the series about returning to Greece and setting up a company. In this part, I’ll explore and document my experience as an expat returning to Greece after 10+ years and applying for Αρθρο 5Γ tax relief. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a 50% tax reduction for 7 years(as of this writing).

Prerequisites

If you have been away for more than 5 years and not getting taxed in Greece, then you can avail of this. You’ll need documentation from the revenue abroad or other means of proving that you were a tax resident of another country. In my case, I exported my tax certificates and P60s(employment income details) for the past 5 years.

First step

To kick off the process I’ve asked my accountant to handle the application. I sent him the documents which were in English, and he made the application with the necessary attachments.

The first problem we encountered was that they asked for the documents to be officially translated. I located a certified/recognized by the state translator in my area and asked her to translate the docs. It was about 20 pages so that was a cost.

Once I received the translated documents, I scanned them and sent them to my accountant to upload them again. The next day the revenue messaged us to tell us that the application was going to the next phase.

Another thing they ask you to submit is a signed statement (υπεύθυνη δήλωση) to state that for the next 2 years, you will remain a tax resident of Greece. This was easily done via GoV.gr so I forwarded the PDF to my accountant to attach to the application.

A few months later

There was a big gap between applying for 5Γ and seeing any progress on it. One thing that went wrong was that due to our judgment to file tax returns for 2022, it was done in a bad way. I didn’t need to file returns in Greece for many years. In 2022, I bought a car that I intended to use for our summer visits in Greece and I reckoned that in 2023 I should likely start filing returns again to make sure that my property (the car) is correctly documented, even though I would still be a foreign tax resident.

In the meanwhile, of course, we decided to return and once we did the first thing I did in early 2023 was to switch my tax residency/address to Greece. Afterward, my accountant tried to file the return for 2022 as a foreign tax resident but the Greek Revenue wouldn’t accept it as their system couldn’t handle the edge case of me being away in 2022 and being able to file it like so after I have moved my residency in 2023. So, they asked us to file it as a Greek resident and reassured us that there wouldn’t be any charges for the inconsistency of income (and the acquisition of the car). So we did. When the Department of Alternative Taxation in Athens started to process my application (in August), they asked for my returns for 2022. We happily provided them and then we received the bad news. The returns for the prior year cannot show you as being a tax resident of Greece 🤦‍♂️. Long story short, it was a difficult journey to change the prior year’s tax returns so I now seem as a Foreign tax resident retroactively. But we did. The lesson we learn though is simple.

If you plan to apply for 5Γ, then do not, under any circumstances, file any tax returns that show you are a Greek Tax resident. Even when the Greek Revenue asks you to! (so they can deal with the edge case).

Ok, but how would you do it differently?

Say you return from Ireland in 2023 November. You spent the majority of 2023 there, so you are a tax resident of Ireland for 2023. You aim to open up shop to invoice or become a permanent employee of a Greek entity in 2024. Then you need to ensure that any tax returns for 2023 are filed BEFORE you switch your tax residency to Greek. If you don’t, then you’ll have a bad time.

Alright, what happened next?

When the sticking point of the bad tax returns was sorted, it took a few weeks to get the OK. Then a few weeks to get the official letter in my taxis notifications that I indeed now have 5Γ for 7 years. All in all, the application will take about 8 months minimum with the current queues. I was told that it’s only two people in Athens who deal with these applications so it’s crucial to start it sooner rather than later. Remember that if you were to return in 2024 to work in Greece, you wouldn’t be asked to pay tax all the way until 2025 fall. That is, if you set up a freelancer setup like I did. So there’s time, but be prudent and start it early.

Reversing the brain drain

I think this is a very good incentive to get people to return. That said, I think that taxation needs to be revamped a bit. IKE is the next most tempting thing at 25% flat tax but other countries around us have much better terms (cough Bulgaria, cough Cyprus ). The cost of living in Greece is not what many would make it so be aware that many things are still expensive.

Infrastructure needs improvement. Internet connections are much inferior to European countries and electricity is going up and down with no warnings (well, unless you live in the major cities, I suppose).

So, overall, happy?

I have a positive outlook for our lives in Greece. I hope things will continue to get better and having people return is going to help the country recover faster.

Remote work is a blessing and while it lasts, there’s no other place in the world that I’d like to work from than from my home country, Greece.

The night someone broke into my car

This is a story about how someone broke into my car to steal some belongings and how, with the help of technology and the Greek police, I was able to retrieve them.

I visited Thessaloniki to spend some time with friends on a warm night in June. They live in west Thessaloniki, and I picked them up early in the evening to go to one of their favorite taverns. We parked in a lot right across from the tavern and sat down to enjoy some food, conversation, and each other’s company. I had packed some clothes, my AirPods Pro, sunglasses, and an electric Oral-B toothbrush into a small paper bag. Thinking that the car was just across the road from where we sat, I thought it would be safe to leave the bag on the back seat, right on top of my toddler’s seat.

After about 15 minutes, I got a notification that I had left my AirPods behind. I looked at the car and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes, these notifications from “Find My” are false positives, as it may think you dropped the case while walking. I ignored the notification.

A few hours later, we decided to move on and got up to get to the car. I was about to suggest a beer follow-up, but then I looked at my car’s door and saw this:

Disappointed, I immediately realized what had happened. The bag was missing, and the side passenger drawer was open and visibly untidy.

In retrospect, we should not have touched much so the forensics could have their best chance when they got the fingerprints the next day.

We immediately phoned 100 (the police) and started checking the surrounding area for the odd chance of them having ditched the bag as they left. They nicked the clothes as well, which were in the bag 😒.

The police took their sweet time to get there, approximately 40 minutes for a car to arrive.

While we were waiting, I thought I should check if the AirPods had sent any signals. And they did!

. We were pretty excited to realize that the AirPods were about 1 km away from where we were. My two friends, after waiting 20 minutes for the police to arrive, decided to get their own car and go to the area to see if they could spot anyone potentially trying to pair the AirPods or sell them.

Now it was 00:15, and the police finally arrived. The two officers that showed up were pretty cool. They registered the event, and one of them also had AirPods at home. I showed him the point on the map, and he got excited! He said we gotta go and check it out. We might even catch them!

So we jumped in our respective cars and headed for the point the AirPods last sent a location from. Once we got there, we found my friends already looking around the park and the bins for the bag. They hadn’t found anything yet.

After looking thoroughly with the policemen and going around the park from side to side probing for a signal, I decided to restart my iPhone. Even though the AirPods were showing as sending continuous signals, they didn’t show exactly where they were.

Once I rebooted the phone, I was pretty tired at that point and more or less thinking that there was approximately zero chance we’d find them. They might even be within one of the apartments, but there were dozens of them all around, so no way to really go and knock on a specific door.

And then it happened. I pressed the Play Sound button and heard a faint feedback noise. I pressed it again and heard it once more. I called the others to the location, and we located the bag dropped in a bin. Folded and dropped in with, thankfully, all the contents still inside (🤢😅). We turned the bin sideways and recovered the bag. I looked inside and, to my complete amazement, saw absolutely everything still inside. I suppose they were looking for money(?).

Perhaps they got scared when they realized that they stole a tracking device.

I thanked everyone involved, and we called it a night.

The next morning, I proceeded to file a lawsuit against an unknown person at the police department. I had cleaned the car a bit with wipes, but they suggested I go by their headquarters to get forensics to look for fingerprints.

Once we got there, the process was pretty quick. The forensics expert found some prints, but he also found a glove mark. These little square patterns. Regardless, if one of the prints recovered from the door belonged to someone with a record, I’ll be notified.

That’s the end of the story at this point. I thought it was interesting enough to convey it to you. Thanks to Apple for some amazing tech. Those belongings were definitely worth a few hundred quid, so I am happy to have recovered them.

In the next few days, I’ll look to get insurance to pay for the broken lock, so I need to chase the repair and the paperwork. Fun!

PS. Never leave belongings in the car while in Greece, especially in any of the big cities. I suppose due to my permanent residence being in Ireland for so many years and in Greece, where we stay in relatively small communities, my guard was lowered. It was a cheap lesson, but a lesson nonetheless.

Edited with ChatGPT 4o for readability and coherence