The €100,000 Question
The Greek flat tax is either a considerable bargain or a straightforward waste, and which one depends entirely on the shape of your income. Here is the arithmetic, run against three real situations.
A flat tax is unusual because it inverts the normal relationship between income and effective rate. The more you earn, the less of it you pay. That makes the headline number almost meaningless on its own: €100,000 is either trivial or ruinous depending on a fact about you that the brochure does not know.
So the only sensible way to think about it is a break-even. What foreign income makes €100,000 the cheaper option?
The mechanics, briefly
Under article 5A you pay a flat €100,000 per year covering all foreign-sourced income, however large. Additional family members join at €20,000 each. The arrangement is fixed for fifteen years. You must not have been Greek tax resident for seven of the previous eight years, and you must invest €500,000 in Greek assets within three years.
Note what is not covered: Greek-sourced income is taxed normally. If you intend to earn here, the flat tax does nothing for that portion, and article 5C may be the relevant regime instead.
Three shapes
These are illustrations of the arithmetic, not tax computations. Your actual alternative depends on which country you are leaving, what treaties apply, and how your income is characterised. That said, the shape of the answer is robust.
- A €400,000 foreign income. The flat tax is 25% of everything you earn. Against most European personal rates on that sum this is roughly a wash, sometimes slightly worse, and it buys certainty rather than savings. If certainty is the point, fine. If savings were the pitch, look again.
- A €1.5 million foreign income. The flat tax is under 7% effective. This is where the regime becomes genuinely difficult to argue with, and it is roughly where the adviser conversations get serious.
- A €400,000 foreign pension. Different regime entirely. Article 5B taxes foreign pension income at a flat 7%, which on that sum is around €28,000 rather than €100,000. Anyone paying the flat tax on a pension income has been badly served.
Below roughly a million in foreign income, the flat tax is buying predictability. Above it, the flat tax is buying money.
The fifteen years are the actual product
The part that gets undersold is the term. Fifteen years of a known number, unaffected by whatever the next four Greek governments decide about personal taxation, is worth something that does not show up in a single-year comparison.
It is also worth more to some fortunes than others. A family whose income is lumpy, with a liquidity event somewhere in the next decade, gets far more from a fixed ceiling than someone on a stable salary-shaped income. Model the fifteen years, not the first one.
The comparison nobody makes
Italy raised its equivalent flat tax to €300,000 a year from 2026, plus €50,000 per family member. Greece did not move. At the top of the income range, that gap of €200,000 a year for fifteen years is a material number in its own right, and it is the clearest single reason this is happening now rather than five years ago.
It is also a reason to be slightly wary. Policy divergences of that size tend to close. Nothing suggests Greece intends to move, and the fifteen-year lock protects those already in, but anyone assuming the 2026 terms will be available in 2031 is assuming something nobody has promised.
Before the meeting
- Work out your foreign income, separately from any Greek-sourced income, because only the first is covered.
- Count the family members who would join at €20,000 each. Four dependants turn €100,000 into €180,000 and move the break-even accordingly.
- If any material part of the income is pension, price 5B before 5A.
- Model fifteen years, not one. The term is the asset.
