Retiring To Greece: What To Sort Out In Your First Year

  • by XpatAthens
  • Sunday, 25 October 2026
Retiring To Greece: What To Sort Out In Your First Year

Retiring to Greece usually starts with a place: a flat in Pangrati, a house above a bay in the Peloponnese, a village on Crete you have been visiting for twenty summers. The paperwork comes later, and that is where a good first year can quietly go wrong. Most of it is straightforward once you know the order. Here is what to sort out, and when.

Early On: The Greek Tax Number

Almost nothing works without an AFM, the Greek tax number: not registering your lease, not a bank account, not electricity or internet. That is why most people get it first, often before they move.

You apply online through myAADE, the tax authority’s portal, and confirm your identity by video call (myAADElive), which works from abroad, in Greek or English. Applying is free, though waiting times vary. If you’d rather not do it online, you can sign an authorisation at a KEP (citizens’ service centre) or a Greek consulate, and a lawyer or accountant files the application for you. Identification can also be done in person at a tax office.

Request your TAXISnet access key (κλειδάριθμος) in the same application. With it you activate your login to the tax portal you will use every year.

Residence: EU & Non-EU

EU citizens can move freely. If you stay longer than three months without working, you need sufficient funds and health insurance, and you register your residence with the police aliens department.

Everyone else, including British retirees moving now (rather than those already covered by the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement), needs a residence permit. For most retirees that means the financially independent person permit, which starts with a national (type D) visa from a Greek consulate before you arrive. You show resources of at least €3,500 a month (plus 20% for a spouse, 15% per child), usually through a pension, bank funds or other legal income, and full health insurance, and you may not work in Greece. The permit is typically issued for up to three years and is renewable as long as you still meet the requirements.

Property buyers have a second route, the Golden Visa: €800,000 in Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and islands with more than 3,100 inhabitants, €400,000 elsewhere (in both cases a single property of at least 120 m²), or €250,000 for certain conversions to residential use and restorations of listed buildings.

One thing to know early: a residence permit and tax residence are not the same thing. Greece treats you as tax resident when your main home or centre of vital interests (family, main income) is here, or once you have spent more than 183 days here within any 12 months, in which case you count as resident from your first day here.

The First Months: Home, Bank, Health

Your lease is registered online by the landlord, and you accept it in TAXISnet with your own login. An unregistered lease is a red flag: you will need the registered version as proof of address for the bank and for most authorities.

A Greek bank account makes daily life, utility direct debits and tax payments much smoother than a foreign card. Bring your passport, AFM, proof of address and proof of your pension.

Healthcare depends on where your pension comes from. If you receive a state pension from the UK or another EU country and that country remains responsible for your healthcare (typically when you have no Greek pension), you may be entitled to an S1 form from it. In Greece you get an AMKA (social security number) and register the S1 with the public health system (EOPYY; in practice often through your local EFKA social security office). You are then covered on the same terms as people insured in Greece. The S1 can only be registered once you live here, and non-EU retirees need proof of health cover for the visa anyway, so most people bridge the first months with private insurance. Retirees without an S1, for example those with only a private pension or from the US, Canada or Australia, usually need private health insurance.

The Tax Decision Of Your First Year: 7% Or The Normal Scale

Greece offers foreign pensioners a special regime: a flat 7% on all foreign-source income for 15 years, subject to a few statutory and treaty exceptions (Article 5B of the Income Tax Code), instead of the normal progressive rates of 9% to 44%. You may qualify if you receive a qualifying pension from abroad, were not Greek tax resident in five of the previous six years, and move from a country that cooperates with Greece on tax matters. Greek-source income is taxed under the normal Greek rules. Each spouse has to qualify in their own right, and the regime only applies once AADE has approved your application.

A few things are worth knowing before you decide:
  • The deadline moved in 2026. Applications are now due by 31 October of the year you want the regime to start, with supporting documents (proof of your foreign pension and, where AADE’s records don’t already show it, of your previous tax residence) by 30 November. If you moved your tax residence to Greece by 2 July, you can choose that year or the next; if later, only the following year. For anyone transferring their tax residence after 2 July 2026, that means applying by 31 October 2027 for tax year 2027. Many older articles still mention 31 March.
  • It is not automatically the better deal. As an indicative example based on the 2026 rates: for a single person whose only income is a pension of €30,000 a year, the normal scale costs around €5,000 and the 7% regime €2,100. On two pensions of €15,000 each, the difference shrinks to roughly €270 a year for the couple. The 7% also applies to all your other foreign income: better for most foreign interest and rent, but it can be less advantageous for foreign dividends, which are normally taxed at 5% under Greece’s standard rules, depending on foreign withholding tax and treaty relief.
  • The 7% on your foreign income is paid once a year, in a single payment, by the last working day of December. Missing it takes you out of the regime. Tax on any Greek income follows the normal payment rules, and you still file a Greek tax return every year. You can opt out by 31 October of a given year, but you cannot come back in.
Your Home Country Does Not Disappear

Moving to Greece does not switch off your old tax office automatically. The double tax treaty between Greece and your former country decides which country may tax each type of pension. For many private pensions and statutory social security pensions that is Greece, but you may need to apply for treaty relief in your former country, usually with a Greek tax residence certificate; British retirees, for example, use HMRC’s DT-Individual form. Government pensions (civil service, armed forces, German Beamte) often follow special treaty rules and stay taxable in the country that pays them, whatever regime you choose in Greece; some treaties make an exception for Greek nationals. Under the 7% regime, foreign tax is credited only where the rules allow and only up to the Greek tax. And US citizens may continue to have US tax filing and reporting obligations while living abroad, depending on their income and circumstances.

Every Year After That

  • Income tax return (E1): filed every year, usually between mid-March and 15 July, covering both Greek and foreign income.
  • The 7% payment, if you are in the regime: by the last working day of December.
  • If you own property: the E9 property declaration (due by 31 January of the year after a purchase), and ENFIA, the annual property tax, payable in up to 12 monthly instalments.
A Calm First Year

None of this is difficult, but the order matters: AFM, residence, lease and bank, healthcare, then the 7% decision, due by 31 October of the year you want it to start. Get the first steps right and the rest becomes routine. If you would like someone to check whether the 7% regime pays off in your case, or to prepare and file the application and your Greek tax return, the team at taxomade works with retirees moving to Greece, in English, German, Spanish and Greek.

Rules as of October 2026. Thresholds and deadlines change; check the current figures before you act.

By Manoli Chionidis and Leonard Amling, Co-founders of taxomade

founders taxomade 2

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