General ramble today, but a little bit about the cost of having a business in Greece at the moment. First though: My copy of Lonely House arrived yesterday. I realised after a few weeks that I didn’t actually have one so though I’d better put one on my shelf. This makes number nine in the collection, sixth novel, ninth book. This copy came from Lulu and if you want to order one the link is here: Lonely House by James Collins.
Also on Tuesday we called in to get our last year 14-15 tax things sorted out with the accountant. Now then, you may not know this but as well as income tax on your personal income, if you own a small (or large) business there are other taxes to pay, some of which are paid after the event, some are paid in front. So, beneath this next photo is a quick rundown of what you can expect to pay for a business in Greece – numbers and things may vary depending on business and place and year and so on, so it’s not going to 100% accurate.
- First off you pay a tax just for having a business and that was, last year on Symi, €520
- Then you pay your income tax and that depends on your income of course, though there is a threshold which is, I believe, about to be lowered to a very low level indeed.
- And with that you pay €400.00 a year in advance, which you then have (I assume) off set against your next year’s tax or which you get rebated if you don’t work.
- And then you have your other running costs and cool stuff such as the VAT you need to pass on to your customers and then take from them to pass on to the government – 16% on some things, all about to change, depends on what work you do and so on
- And then you need to pay your town hall tax at a certain % depending again on where you are and what you do
- And then you pay your shop rent unless you own the building
- And of course you have the electricity and water bills
- And your stock bills on that otherwise you wouldn’t have anything to sell
- Staff? You pay your staff’s IKA (health insurance) for the year plus an Easter bonus, plus a Christmas bonus which a lot of folk don’t get because they work up until a certain date so no one is too sure where that goes
- And you pay your own TEVE or health insurance; this used to be around €200 per month to start with and increased year on year
- And then you have to pay your accountant for putting it all together and they charge at least €100.00 per month, again depending on business sand so on
- What did we forget? Probably something. I am sure there’s another tax that you pay for the fun of having to pay taxes; a kind of tax-tax, just to make sure you’ve paid something to someone somewhere.
- So, you can expect to pay at least (does quick add up on the ‘set’ basics, i.e. not the stock or income tax or VAT) something around €9,000 just on the things needed before you start to make any money.
Is it any wonder small business are going bust left right and shopping centre?
I just thought I’d share that with you as I was thinking about tax stuff yesterday and it is actually yesterday today – just back from Town on Tuesday you see, ah, fooled you again! But tonight we have a party to look forward to and a walk to Pedi. There may be a bus back as today we’ve already been to Yialos and back. We took the scenic route down the zig zag below Lemonitisa which comes out, well all over the place, but in our case near the newly refurbished multi-million Italian property towards the bottom of the Kali Strata. Coming back up again with 10 kilos of cat litter, 10 kilos of shopping and a bag of 78s (thanks Steve! Love ‘em) in the heat at midday is something of a trial, but at least it’s exercise and you don’t get taxed on it. Yet.
