Does the Greek tax office for foreign residents still exist?

No. The Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης Κατοίκων Εξωτερικού - Εναλλακτικής Φορολόγησης was abolished on 14 July 2025 by decision Δ.ΟΡΓ.Α 81389 ΕΞ 2025. Its work moved to KEFODE Attikis at Σμύρνης 23 & Κυδωνιών, Ταύρος.

Where do you file a Greek article 5A non-dom application in 2026?

Electronically, through the "Ta Aitimata mou" platform on myAADE, with proof that the minimum investment has been transferred to an account at a financial institution established in Greece. There is no physical office to attend.

Can you get a Greek AFM at a KEP?

No. As recorded in the national register of administrative procedures, updated 3 August 2026, AFM and kleidarithmos are provided digitally only, through myAADE and gov.gr with video support via myAADElive.

Which office issues residence permits for Vouliagmeni?

The North Sector and East Attica directorate at Ψαρρών 19, Pallini — not the southern office in Piraeus, which serves Glyfada, Alimos and Elliniko. Vari, Voula and Vouliagmeni are administered from Pallini.

Is a lawyer required to buy property in Greece?

No. Lawyer attendance has been optional for all parties since 1 January 2014 under paragraph 3 of the same provision that briefly made it compulsory above €80,000. A notary is required; a lawyer is not.

There Is No Longer an Office to Walk Into

The tax office for foreign residents was abolished on 14 July 2025. Every guide still sends people to it. What replaced it is not another building — it is a Greek-language login, reachable by a telephone line that only works from inside Greece.

LivingTheta Desk/ 12 September 2026/ 10 min

A closed metal door with a heavy lock, painted blue-grey.

Key takeaways

The tax service for foreign residents and alternative taxation was abolished on 14 July 2025 by decision Δ.ΟΡΓ.Α 81389 ΕΞ 2025; its work moved to KEFODE Attikis at Σμύρνης 23, Ταύρος.
Every Attica DOY was renamed a Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης on 17 June 2024 and stripped of tax administration. DOY Glyfadas is now the 11th Tax Service.
An AFM and kleidarithmos have been digital-only since 2026 — not at a KEP, and no longer over a tax office counter.
AADE publishes no telephone number for KEFODE at all. Contact runs through 1521, which works from Greek numbers only.
Residence permits are still physical for biometrics and collection — and Vari, Voula and Vouliagmeni are administered from Pallini, not from the southern office in Piraeus.
An AMKA cannot be obtained online. It is the last unavoidable counter in the process.

Search for where to file a Greek non-dom application and you will be told, in a dozen places, to go to the tax office for foreign residents. Law firms say it. Relocation guides say it. Forum answers say it, with an address.

That office does not exist. It was abolished on 14 July 2025, fourteen months ago, and nothing published for a general reader has caught up.

What actually happened, with the instrument

Decision Δ.ΟΡΓ.Α 81389 ΕΞ 2025, in ΦΕΚ Β′ 3433 of 3 July 2025, ceased the operation of the Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης Κατοίκων Εξωτερικού - Εναλλακτικής Φορολόγησης with effect from 14 July 2025 and transferred its competences to KEFODE Attikis in Tavros.

We checked the negative as well. The office does not appear in AADE’s own directory of tax services dated September 2026, which lists twelve numbered services for Attica plus two in Piraeus and one for ships. There is no foreign residents office in it.

The abolition was itself the third act. The office had been renamed twice before — from DOY Katoikon Exoterikou, to a longer version that added the alternative-taxation wording, to a Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης when the whole network was converted. All three names are now dead, which is part of why the error is so widespread: each version is still sitting in somebody’s archive.

The larger change underneath it

On 17 June 2024 every DOY in Attica was renamed a Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης and stripped of substantive tax administration, which moved centrally to KEFODE. What is left in each local building is a service counter.

What moved out of the physical office, and where it went, as at 12 September 2026
Step	Where it used to happen	Where it happens now
AFM and kleidarithmos	A tax office counter, or a KEP	Digital only — myAADE and gov.gr, with video support through myAADElive
Article 5A application	The foreign residents tax office	Electronically, through "Ta Aitimata mou" on myAADE
Article 5B application	The foreign residents tax office	Electronically, through "Ta Aitimata mou" on myAADE
Article 5C application	The foreign residents tax office	Fully digital since 3 October 2025
Income tax, VAT, register	The local DOY	KEFODE Attikis, Σμύρνης 23, Ταύρος
Counter service near the coast	DOY Glyfadas	11η YFE, Γούναρη 227 — guidance and collection only
AMKA	e-EFKA or a KEP	Still e-EFKA or a KEP, in person only

Sources per row: AADE’s directory of tax services, September 2026; AADE’s FAQ guide for non-residents, 26 November 2025; the Μίτος national register of administrative procedures, AFM record updated 3 August 2026; the joint Finance Ministry and AADE release of 2 October 2025 for article 5C. Checked 12 September 2026.

The clearest single piece of evidence is AADE’s own guide for Greeks abroad and non-resident taxpayers, published on 26 November 2025. It runs to twenty-two pages, it covers AFM, all three alternative regimes, filing and contact — and it does not name a physical office anywhere in it.

The telephone number that does not exist

AADE publishes no direct line for KEFODE. This is deliberate rather than an oversight: the July 2026 KEFODE directory is a document with every telephone field blank, and the contact instruction is 1521.

1521 is free and staffed from 07:00 to 20:00 on weekdays. It works from Greek numbers only. The digital equivalent runs around the clock but requires TAXISnet credentials.

Put those together and you get the position a prospective 5A applicant is actually in. Before you move, you have no Greek number and no TAXISnet. There is no published international line. You cannot speak to the authority that will decide your tax status, and there is no counter to present yourself at instead.

The building has been replaced by a login, and the login is in Greek.

This is not a complaint about digitisation, which has made most of this faster for people already inside the system. It is an observation about who the remaining friction lands on, and it lands almost entirely on the person who has not arrived yet.

What is still a building

Three things, and it is worth knowing which three.

Residence permit biometrics and collection. Filing is electronic, but you are summoned in person to give fingerprints — you cannot book that appointment, the service calls you — and you attend again to collect the card. For Glyfada, Alimos and Elliniko that means Piraeus. For Vari, Voula and Vouliagmeni it means Pallini, twenty-five kilometres inland, which is the most counter-intuitive fact in this whole category and one we have not seen written anywhere else.

An AMKA. All three official procedure records say the same thing: in person only, or through a representative with a signature-certified authorisation. And the appointment system requires the AMKA you are coming to get, which is solved by booking on 1555 instead — the most useful single line in this set.

Paper. An apostille on a Greek document is a counter on Katehaki, free, four hours a day. Legalisation for a non-convention country is a different counter in an arcade off Akadimias, also four hours a day, and it moved there in 2022 without most published addresses noticing.

Two more things almost everything published gets wrong

The compulsory-lawyer rule for property purchases above €80,000 has been dead since 1 January 2014. It was introduced in November 2012 and the same provision made attendance optional fourteen months later. The Bar Association was still asking for it back in May 2025, which is as clear a proof as you could want that it has not returned. A notary is compulsory; a lawyer is not.

And Enterprise Greece, the state investment agency, has no role in the Golden Visa and never has. Its own guide to residence permits for property owners now displays one line of text reading "UNDER REVIEW" and the document is withdrawn. The investor permit is a single department in the Ministry building at Rentis — whose own public pages, in turn, still quote a €250,000 threshold repealed in 2024.

What to do with this

Two practical conclusions. First, check the date on any official Greek page before you trust it: the Ministry of Migration’s Golden Visa pages were last touched in 2022 and 2023, and AADE’s own appointment documentation is dated June 2022 and still lists two offices that no longer exist under those names.

Second, and less comfortably: the practical case for an adviser has got stronger rather than weaker as the process has digitised. Not because the forms are hard, but because the system now assumes a Greek mobile, a Greek IBAN, TAXISnet credentials and a reading knowledge of Greek before it will talk to you at all. Where that leaves the choice of adviser is a separate question, and one worth being cynical about.

Questions

Does the Greek tax office for foreign residents still exist?: No. The Υπηρεσία Φορολογικής Εξυπηρέτησης Κατοίκων Εξωτερικού - Εναλλακτικής Φορολόγησης was abolished on 14 July 2025 by decision Δ.ΟΡΓ.Α 81389 ΕΞ 2025. Its work moved to KEFODE Attikis at Σμύρνης 23 & Κυδωνιών, Ταύρος.
Where do you file a Greek article 5A non-dom application in 2026?: Electronically, through the "Ta Aitimata mou" platform on myAADE, with proof that the minimum investment has been transferred to an account at a financial institution established in Greece. There is no physical office to attend.
Can you get a Greek AFM at a KEP?: No. As recorded in the national register of administrative procedures, updated 3 August 2026, AFM and kleidarithmos are provided digitally only, through myAADE and gov.gr with video support via myAADElive.
Which office issues residence permits for Vouliagmeni?: The North Sector and East Attica directorate at Ψαρρών 19, Pallini — not the southern office in Piraeus, which serves Glyfada, Alimos and Elliniko. Vari, Voula and Vouliagmeni are administered from Pallini.
Is a lawyer required to buy property in Greece?: No. Lawyer attendance has been optional for all parties since 1 January 2014 under paragraph 3 of the same provision that briefly made it compulsory above €80,000. A notary is required; a lawyer is not.

Disclosure

Journalism, not tax or legal advice. Every fact here was checked against the issuing authority on 11 and 12 September 2026, and this is an area that has moved repeatedly: three of the offices described changed status in the last two years and a fourth has a replacement instrument pending. The abolition decision is cited from a secondary host reproducing the Government Gazette text; the abolition is independently confirmed by AADE’s own July 2025 press release and by the absence of the office from its September 2026 directory. Several things are deliberately absent. We give no public opening hours for KEFODE, for the Glyfada tax counter, for the Ministry’s investor department, for Enterprise Greece or for the Bar Association, because none of those bodies publishes one and converting a staff attendance time into a public opening time would send someone to a locked door. We give no AFM payment mechanism for the €100,000 annual charge because we could not source one. We do not resolve whether a Golden Visa or financially-independent-person permit supports an AMKA: the instruments point one way and have never been reconciled in a primary source, and a reader could act on a wrong answer. Greek press has reported both a pending Golden Visa overhaul and, since March 2025, discussion of abolishing the Decentralised Administrations entirely; neither is enacted and neither is published here as fact, but if the second happens every residence permit address in this piece changes.

There Is No Longer an Office to Walk Into

What actually happened, with the instrument

The larger change underneath it

The telephone number that does not exist

What is still a building

Two more things almost everything published gets wrong

What to do with this

Questions

Sources

Three firms, not thirty

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