AADE: Audits for concealment of income on Airbnb and Booking property owners

Short-term property rentals and hotels and tourist accommodation that operate through Booking, will be under the “microscope” of the Independent Public Revenue Authority (AADE) auditors in the coming days, as there are indications of an increase in tax evasion.

Despite the measures that have been taken to limit the phenomenon, “black money” continues to circulate widely in short-term rentals, while large discrepancies are found between bookings and declared income and in accommodation rentals through Booking.

The crossover program will start immediately with the help of the new digital unit, which also uses artificial intelligence. Real estate lease checks will utilize artificial intelligence algorithms and applications, combining and cross-referencing all sources of tax and other data.

These are the details of the properties declared on Taxisnet, the last year’s income (represented in the 2024 tax returns), the bank account movements and the credit cards of the property owners.

According to the AADE plan, the controls will focus on:

In undeclared properties

  • The information declared in the tax returns will be cross-checked with the information communicated to AADE by the short-term rental companies, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO.
  • AADE, within the framework of the agreement it has signed with the platforms Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group/VRBO, has already received all the data of the leases for 2023.
  • Thus, the control mechanism, having a complete picture of the type and surface of the properties that are rented out, as well as the amount of income collected by the managers, will start the intersections.
  • The aim is to identify cases of non-declaration of the properties in the Registry or false statements about the details of the properties and the duration of the lease.

To Airbnb entrepreneurs

  • AADE’s special team will carry out a series of cross-checks between owners’ tax identification numbers, Property Identification Numbers (PRI) and the registers of short-term real estate rental platforms.
  • The aim is to identify those who rent more than two properties on a short-term lease and have not converted their VAT number to a business one. In practice, approximately 7,500 taxpayers who own three or more properties will come under the microscope.
  • It will be checked if they have started a business activity and are paying insurance contributions, business tax and VAT from the first property from this year. Next year they will be taxed on the basis of the minimum presumptive income that applies to self-employed persons and not on the scale of rents, as it applies to natural persons. Those who have not already done so will receive a warning email from AADE.

In hotels-rooms via Booking

  • Cross-checks of reported hotel gross revenue with revenue data from their transactions with the Booking platform for fiscal year 2022 have begun.
  • Checkers are already targeting hotels, which are being investigated for reported occupancy and nightly rates, based on data displayed on Booking.com. The aim is to establish whether the amounts declared correspond to reality and whether, based on these figures, taxes are paid.