New taxes in Greece

[john61ct]

Wow. Scary stuff. . .

[Barra]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Wow. Scary stuff. . .

Lol yeah especially for a cruisers forum. Let's move along nothing to see here!

[Van Der Beek]

Ignorance is always scary john61ct and Barra, ...... indeed, especially when folk don't read the rules about posting political stuff. Thread edited.

Pete7

[Palarran]

Originally Posted by karabil

we fly back to Athens in 2 weeks, cant wait as Muscade has been on the dry since August 2017. Will let you know once we collect our papers from port police.

That's great Karen. I can imagine the excitement you must have. Did you keep Muscade at Olympic Marina?

[karabil]

yes, went through Corinth canal after 2.5 months in the Ioanians.

[CatNewBee]

We are sailing slowly south trough Croatia with a short shopping stöp in Italy bound for Greece end of June / July. Very keen on news how this tax thing develops.

Please keep posting...

[meirriba]

Well, I have sort of forced the Greek to receive the tax, and by doing that, I probably threw some good hard earned cash away.
I have spoken to a port police in a nice middle sized greek port town. They were not ready to get payment and sent me to the customs. The customs office was closed (during working hours, as advertised on the closed door).
I have set up an application on the web using a smarphone (normal website does not respond), had to fix the data three times for not very obvious mistakes/missing info.
This was met with some success: got back an approval of the application and payment notice.
From a friend in Turkey I have received the account details of the Greek tax authority and transferred the payment by SWIFT with the code given to me on the payment notice in the details.
Now I wait to meet someone who will interrogate us about the tax in our future visits to port police or customs...

[john61ct]

Fact that it came in from Turkey, probably will be returned 8-)

[karabil]

Ok, arrived in Athens and spoke to marina as Muscade was going back in the water. Marina said we had to set up and pay etapai before we could get our transit log back from customs. Tried to create and fill out the english version application online, nightmare, gave up and went to port police in Lavrio who generously spent 2 people 1 hr to fill out in Greek version on my tablet. They gave me a "depositing" number and told me i had to pay at bank or online but you need a euro bank account to pay online. . (Have since learnt can also pay at customs office) . You get the application and documents emailed to you automatically a few hours after creating the electronic form. You take the forms that are emailed to you to the bank or customs and they will stamp as paid for however many months you have entered. You must pay for each month by the 3rd of the month or date of entry. You pay for the whole month even if entering on the 28th or 29th of the month. Fines are 1100 euro if not paid and they are checking. Coast gaurd are also checking safety equiptment lately.
When at customs to collect our stored transit log they requested the etapai, so you will not get a transit log without a paid etapai.
When at port police in Lavrio they requested marine licence. First time ever been asked for that in 20 years sailing internationally. They were not going to return transit log untill produced so lucky had it with me.
It appears that they made have had a foot up the arse and are trying to raise revenue by following the rules.
We dont have a problem paying the tax, but the amount of time and drama to go from office to office dealing with beurocracy was ridiculous.
Still love Greece and the Greeks.

[kas_1611]

Originally Posted by karabil

They gave me a "depositing" number and told me i had to pay at bank or online but you need a euro bank account to pay online. . (Have since learnt can also pay at customs office) . You get the application and documents emailed to you automatically a few hours after creating the electronic form. You take the forms that are emailed to you to the bank or customs and they will stamp as paid for however many months you have entered.

We dont have a problem paying the tax, but the amount of time and drama to go from office to office dealing with beurocracy was ridiculous.
Still love Greece and the Greeks.

You need a Euro account to pay online? Well that's a RRPITA, especially as my bank don't charge me any extra to make a payment in Euro from my Sterling account if I pay by debit card.

How do they stamp an electronic document? Or are we being expected to print out the documents? Kind of defeats the E-TAPAI principle.

Hopefully the bureaucracy will settle down as the system moves forward and some of these crinkles will get ironed out but I suspect it will either stay the same or get worse.

[pmx]

I'm currently in the process of buying a second hand boat in Greece.
If you know what you do - and what to expect - there are nice offers (just like in the French West Indies, for example).


I'll fly to Greece to visit a number of boats pretty soon, I've several options, all sloops between 10.60m to 12.99m. Most of these boats being stored on the ground, no tax is due.


I was not aware of the big jump at 12m (11m.99 = 33€/month ; 12.01m = 96€/m ; 13m = 104€/month). It's steep. !


A longer, older, single hull boat, these days, doesn't necessary mean a wealthy owner


On the other hand, a 11.99m catamaran is (usually) a different matter, price-wise...


If it can be compared : there is a yearly boat tax attached to the French registration. Cost depends on the length and the age of the boat.
Very old boats, like mine, are exempted.
I believe, but I'm not sure, that catamarans (or more exactly : extra wide boats) pays an extra.
IMO, it's a more "fair" approach.

I don't know how it goes in other countries.


BTW, reading this thread I just learned about Mr Christopher Robb : great, clever and much needed job !

[Sailor 99]

Originally Posted by AlfaGTV

I read about it on Noonsite: https://www.noonsite.com/Countries/G...s-and-counting

Looks like I will not be going to Greece.

[pmx]

I think the Greek gov't is trying hard to let foreign boater manage the TEPAH in a quick and modern way, using IT (Internet technology)
This is certainly a tough step for some parts of the Greek administration...


The problem is that there are fines associated with the system, and I see a potential risk for a skipper to fall into an illegal situation simply because of the system initial rough edges and failures.



Also, we are not yet in the full "high season", so the servers are not pushed to their limits... Other kinds of (purely technical) problems may well popup !

The future will tell.

[CatNewBee]

Thank you'll for the input!

Got my Greek moments yesterday and today. To be fair, yesterday was a Greek hollyday I had not expected.

As EU boat you need a DEKPA and a TEPAI payd before they (port police) even think of clearing you in.

Greeks love Odysseus and the Odyssey, and they love to entertain and share their passion about tricky challenges.

First of all was to find the CENTRAL TAX OFFICE by giving the prospects a nebulous direction like "somewhere in the center of the town, there is a theater nearby" and look in Google... Asking our way through, we visited the nice town of Kerkira, and finally found it, Google was not much of a help either, he led us to the central post office instead.

Anyway, take a number and wait for you turn... At the counter a nice young man started to enter all the data from your passport and eventually asks for your father's name and mother's name. To make it a little more exciting, when finished the questions he told me, the computer / server got a problem and cannot process the form. He recommended going to town for a coffee and come back in 20 minutes or a few hours later, maybe then it's working again. No need to line up, just come to the counter... After a coffee, German 10 minutes later, the counter was still there, but the young man had disappeared, so take a number...

Finally the sheet of paper was printed. You need to pay 50EUR for it , of course somewhere in the town, a bank or pos office would be fine. Fortunately in the quarter nearby there are 10 banks, easy task we thought... All banks have double gates, yo must push a button, enter the first door, close it, push button, open the second door, get in... Very crowded inside, running gag in Greece : get a number an queu up... Ours was 275, the counter shows 32, so plenty of time.. Well, we got out of the bank, there are 9 more around... Finally we get lots of numbers and found one, that gave us the 169, by processing number 112. It was the closest one and we waited paciently for 2 hours to pay the 50 bucks, plus 2 bucks for processing. They also do a quizz at the bank for enjoyment, they ask for your mobile phone number, just in case the transaction is rejected by the other bank with the tax office account. To make it more fun, the phone number with country code is too long for the input field in the system. So I told him, he can keep the change, in case the transaction is rejected... After a quick signature, we got the payment confirmation.

Next step is the ETEPAI. You must enter a lot of useless information, face several challenges, including, mothers name, fathers name, email addresses, mmsi numbers, call signs, overcome the database of registered home ports and many more until at the end of the quizz you have to hit the final save button... And here it comes: UNEXPECTED ERROR.
So try again... Asking at the tax office, they told me, we can pay it at the port police, they have manual forms... The port police refuses to do anything about it, they do not have any forms and do not collect taxes. There is no Hotline nor any contact information fot the ETEPAI. They also told us, all the Greeks use this server for their taxes, and it is frequently overloaded, so try again late at night or so.. I had to bit on my tongue to not comment on Greeks and taxes at this moment... After some arguments, a power outage and a shift change they suggested to go to an internet coffee to try it again. Same result.

Then they got a list of agents with phone numbers ...

Called the agent, the nearest was across the street 300 m away.

50 Euro for the agent and 10 minutes later we had the ETEPAI paid by the agent with his bank account, they know how to trick the system... The agent could even had saved us the whole journey to the tax office, there is a online application for the Dekpa too and he could pay it online as well.

Finally back at the port police you pay 15 EUR for the document they produce (by hand) and you are welcomed finally for cruising...

Our advice, go straight to the agent, before even going to the harbor police. It is worth the 50 bucks!

[Sailor 99]

Fact is the cruising taxes all around the world are mostly just a money grab. Nothing is done with that money to make cruising better, or to collect garbage or anything else. Its just a grab.


It totally ignores that cruisers coming into your country spend money there and usually a far bit of it. Generally at least 2 to 3K US per month and usually more.



The taxes that change by foot are the most egregious example. There are some people that think big boat! rich...... lets get them. Fact is we are on a 34 year old 50 foot boat that we likely would be hard pressed to get 75K for.


If the wife wants to go we will go but for the most part I don't see any reason to go to Greece. But it looks like it is a major hassle to pay and there lots of other places in the world that don't make it hard and expensive to visit.



When it comes down to it most anchorages look the same, and tasty food can be found anywhere except a buffet. Having to wander for 3 days trying to find a way to pay a cruising tax is a waste of precious time.