“All taxes included”

“All taxes included” is a good marketing line. In a contract it is a commitment to pay a tax that has not yet been set.

Gilad is building fourteen apartments in Kallithea, south of central Athens. It is his second project in Greece, after a small building in Piraeus that he handed over in 2024, and before that came ten years of construction management at a contracting company in Israel. Eleven apartments have already been sold, eight of them to Israelis. His sale contracts contain one sentence he is proud of: “The price includes all taxes and levies applicable to the transaction.” He drafted it himself, after hearing the question “And what else will I pay?” too many times on his first project.

This is what the last few weeks in his file looked like, according to my records.

July 2026. Gilad's Greek accountant sends him an email. The temporary suspension of VAT on new apartments, thanks to which buyers pay a 3% transfer tax instead of 24% VAT, ends on December 31, 2026. Gilad's final deeds are planned for the handover date, in the first quarter of 2027. Gilad replies in one sentence: “That suspension has been extended for years.” And he is not wrong. It really has been extended again and again.

October 20, 07:40. Gilad sends me a link to an article in Greek and three words: “There, extended again.” In the bill put out for consultation two days earlier, Section 17 extends the suspension to December 31, 2027, and existing suspensions are extended automatically. I reply that this is a bill in consultation, that parliament still has to approve it, and that until it is published in the Government Gazette, the date that applies to his deeds is still December 31, 2026.

October 21. I ask him for the sale contract template, and in clause 4 I find his sentence. As long as the suspension is in force, that sentence costs him almost nothing. But if it lapses and the deed is signed in January, VAT applies to the sale, and the price, under his contract, already includes it. Of every hundred euros the buyer pays, about 19.35 euros go to VAT and not to Gilad. On the eleven apartments sold, at an average price of 241 thousand euros, that is more than five hundred thousand euros.

“That's the entire profit of the project,” he says. “And then some.”

October 23, video call. Taking part: Gilad, his accountant, the lawyer who works with me in Athens, and me. One question: can final deeds be signed before the end of the year for apartments still under construction? The lawyer reviews the file and answers that in this building, where the division into apartments is already registered, it is possible. The accountant raises the other side. A buyer who pays the balance at the deed, before the building is finished, will want security that the building will be completed, and Gilad will have to provide a bank guarantee.

October 26. Gilad calls the eleven buyers. Seven agree to sign in December against a bank guarantee for completion of construction. Two cannot, because their mortgage was approved only for a finished apartment. And two refuse. “I'm not signing for an apartment without windows,” one of them writes. Two of the Israeli buyers who agreed ask about Section 16 of the same bill, the one that from July 2027 raises the transfer tax for tax residents outside the EU. For them, a deed in December solves that question too.

October 28. The decision. Seven deeds will be signed between December 14 and 18 before a notary in Athens. The Israeli buyers who will not fly will sign powers of attorney here with an apostille. According to the bank's offer, the guarantees for the seven apartments will cost Gilad about 11 thousand euros a year in fees.

October 30. We change the contract template for the three apartments not yet sold. The price is now stated before VAT, and next to it is a paragraph explaining to the buyer what happens if the suspension lapses and what happens if it is extended. Gilad is worried this will scare off Israeli buyers. He may be right.

Seven deeds out of eleven are protected, if everything goes as planned. Four still depend on the Greek parliament, and so does the margin on the three unsold apartments.

“I bought peace of mind for seven deeds,” Gilad told me yesterday. “The rest I'm leaving to parliament.”

And I don't know whether we did the right thing. The consultation closes tomorrow. If the law passes in November as it stands, Gilad will pay guarantee fees for certainty that would have come anyway. If it is delayed or changed, those seven deeds will be the decision that saved the project for him. I will update.

Israeli developers who sell to Israelis love the phrase “all taxes included,” and there is a good reason for it: the buyer wants one number, with no surprises. But that phrase shifts the entire risk of a tax change onto you, and prices it at today's tax. When the suspension is temporary, “all taxes” is not a number. It is a bet on a decision by a parliament in another country. The price in the contract is fixed. The tax inside it is not.

The question I would ask in your place

• Exactly which tax is included in the price written in my sale contract, and what happens to the price if the rate changes before the deed?
• How many of my deeds are planned after December 31, 2026, and what share of their profit depends on a single suspension that has not yet been extended by law?
• If I bring a deed forward before construction is finished, how much will the guarantee to the buyer cost me, and what am I giving up in return?

Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.

Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית

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