Tekmiria and Trading Income: Greek Presumptive Tax Risk

General information about tax rules, not tax or legal advice. Rules change and every situation is different: check with a qualified adviser in your country before you file.

You trade MNQ from a flat in Athens. Last year you finished roughly flat, maybe slightly down after data fees. No salary, no employer, no payslip. You file your E1 with a very small number on it, or with nothing at all, and then the tax comes back and it is not small.

Nobody made a mistake. The Greek system does not only tax what you declare. It also taxes what your life appears to cost. That second calculation is called τεκμήρια, tekmiria, and for somebody whose income arrives as broker withdrawals rather than as a payslip, it is the single biggest tax risk in the country.

This is how it is built, why trading income interacts with it so badly, and what you can actually do about it before the filing season.

What tekmiria actually are

Tekmiria are presumptions of income. The Greek Income Tax Code, Law 4172/2013, contains a group of articles, 30 to 34, that set out an alternative way of calculating your minimum taxable income. Instead of starting from what you say you earned, the system starts from what you visibly consume and works backwards.

There are two families of them and they do different jobs.

• Living expense presumptions (τεκμήρια διαβίωσης, article 31). Your home, your car, your boat, a swimming pool, private school fees, domestic staff. Each one carries a fixed annual amount written into the law, whether or not you actually spent it.
• Acquisition presumptions (τεκμήρια απόκτησης, article 32), better known as πόθεν έσχες, "where did you get it". Buying a car or a flat, repaying a loan, making a large gift, putting capital into a company. The amount you spent is treated as income you must be able to explain.

Article 30 does the damage. Your taxable income for the year is the higher of the income you declared and the income the presumptions produce. If the presumptions win, the difference is added to your return and taxed.

This is not an audit. Nobody has to suspect you of anything. It happens automatically, inside the system, the moment you press submit on the E1.

How the numbers are built

The living expense figures come from scales set in article 31. The two that catch almost everybody are the home and the car.

The residence presumption is calculated per square metre, on a rising scale: a low rate for the first band of square metres, higher rates as the property gets larger. The amount is then adjusted upwards for expensive areas, using the official zone price of the location, and again for detached houses. A secondary residence counts at half. If you rent, the presumption still applies to you as the occupier, which surprises people who assume it only hits owners.

The car presumption is based on engine capacity, with a base amount for small engines and increases for each additional 100 cubic centimetres. Older cars get a reduction, substantial once the vehicle passes ten years.

That last row is the one that matters for a young trader with a rented studio and no car. There is a minimum annual living expense of 3,000 euro for a single filer and 5,000 euro for a married couple filing jointly. Declare zero and the system will still treat you as having lived on that amount.

Two warnings about the figures. First, the exact euro amounts and coefficients in article 31 have been amended repeatedly since the law was written, and reducing them has been a recurring theme in recent tax bills. Second, the only numbers that count are the ones in force for the tax year you are filing, which are set out in the official E1 instructions published each year. Do not copy scale amounts out of a blog post, including this one. Check them on AADE, the Independent Authority for Public Revenue, for your filing year.

Why a trader is the perfect target

The system was designed for a country where most people have an employer who reports their salary. If you have a payslip, your declared income is usually well above the presumptions and you never think about them again.

A retail futures trader has the opposite profile, and it goes wrong in four specific ways.

You can have a bad year and still have a life. Rent, food and a car do not stop because your account did. The tekmiria assume a cost of living that your flat or losing year cannot support, and the difference becomes taxable income.

Your withdrawals are not income in the way the system expects. When you move money from a broker account to a Greek bank account, some of it is your own capital coming home, not profit. The tekmiria do not read bank statements. They read your declaration.

Losses do not help. A loss year is worse than a small profit year, not better, because the gap between what you declared and what the system presumes is wider.

The nastiest version is the one where a trader thinks not declaring is the safe option. It is the opposite. Undeclared income does not make the presumptions go away; it just removes the only thing that could have covered them.

How the difference is taxed

When the presumption beats your declaration, article 34 decides what the added difference is treated as. The attribution matters, because Greece taxes different categories at different rates.

If you have employment or pension income, the difference is generally added to that category. If you do not, which describes most full time traders, the added difference is generally treated as income from business activity and taxed on the progressive scale that applies to employment, pension and business income. That scale has historically run from 9 per cent on the first band up to 44 per cent at the top. It was reworked for 2026 with lower rates for younger taxpayers and for families with children, so the bands and rates you will actually face depend on your age, your children and the year you are filing. The current table is on gov.gr and on the AADE site, and it is worth reading rather than assuming.

There is a mechanism to challenge the attribution. You can argue that the difference comes from a specific source, or that it is covered, but you have to prove it with documents, in the return, before an assessment exists. Arguing afterwards is much harder and much slower.

What counts as trading income in Greece

Two very different things get called "trading income" by traders, and Greek tax law puts them in two very different boxes.

Gains from your own account. Gains on the transfer of securities, a category that includes derivative financial products, fall under the capital gains rules of the Income Tax Code and have been taxed at a flat 15 per cent for individuals who are not carrying on this as a business. The amount goes in the relevant section of the return, and losses in the category can generally be carried forward within the same category rather than set against your salary or your rent.

The other presumption, if you register

For freelancers and the self employed, Greek law sets a minimum presumed net income. It starts from a multiple of the statutory minimum wage, rises with the number of years you have been in business, rises again by reference to the highest salary you pay an employee if you have any, and can be increased further where turnover is high compared with your sector. You are taxed on that minimum even if you earned less, unless you fall into one of the exceptions or you formally dispute it, which triggers a procedure rather than a form.

On top of the tax, registration brings social security. Greek freelancers pay EFKA in fixed monthly classes that you select, not as a percentage of profit, which means a bad month costs the same as a good one. The classes and the rules are published by EFKA.

None of this is an argument against registering. It is an argument against registering blindly because someone on a forum said freelancers pay less. Run both scenarios with an accountant using your own numbers: the tekmiria exposure if you stay unregistered, and the minimum income plus contributions if you register.

How you cover a tekmirio

The presumptions can be covered, and this is where the planning actually happens. The Income Tax Code lists the amounts you may use to justify the gap. The ones that matter for a trader:

• Consumption of capital from previous years (ανάλωση κεφαλαίου). Income you declared in earlier years, taxed or legally exempt, minus the living expenses of those years, can be carried forward and used to cover today's presumptions. This is the big one, and it only exists if you filed returns in those earlier years. A trader who declared nothing for three years has no capital to consume.
• Proceeds from selling an asset, a documented loan, or a gift or parental benefit that was properly declared and taxed.
• Income taxed at a special rate or exempt, including capital gains you declared at the flat rate. Yes: declaring and paying the 15 per cent on your own account gains gives you cover you would not otherwise have.

There is a structural point buried in that list. The tekmiria punish people who declare nothing and reward people who declare consistently, even modestly. Every year you file, you build up a stock of covering capital for the years that follow. Every year you skip, you make the next bad year more expensive.

One more thing worth knowing: article 33 sets out cases where the living expense presumptions do not apply at all, and one of them concerns individuals who are tax residents of another country and have no actual income in Greece. If you are seriously considering moving, that is a conversation with a Greek accountant and probably one in the destination country too, and it must happen before the move, not after.

What to do before you file

The E1 season runs through spring and into summer, with the exact deadline set each year, so check the date on AADE rather than trusting last year's. Before you get there:

• File, even in a bad year. A return with a small number on it builds covering capital. A missing return builds nothing and leaves the presumptions unopposed.
• Add up your presumptions first. Home, car, minimum. Do that before you look at your trading result, so you know what number you have to reach.
• Separate capital from profit. Keep a simple record of what you sent to the broker and what came back. Withdrawing your own deposit is not income and you need to be able to show that.
• Keep every transfer traceable. Your name on both ends, bank to bank, statements downloaded and stored. Broker platforms do not keep your history forever.
• Take it to an accountant who has seen a foreign broker statement before. Not every λογιστής has. Ask directly.

The trap in all of this is that the tekmiria feel unfair, and reacting to that feeling by hiding is precisely the behaviour the system was designed to catch. It is a blunt instrument built for a specific national problem, and it lands hardest on people with irregular, foreign, badly documented income. That is you. The only defence is paperwork, filed on time, every year, including the years you would rather forget.

This article is general information about the Greek tax system, not tax or legal advice. The rules, the scales and the rates change from year to year, so check the current position on the official sources linked above and take your own case to a qualified Greek accountant or tax adviser before you act.

tekmiria and trading income

Educational content, not investment advice. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. Any reference to Algomyth results is hypothetical, simulated over historical data, and shown in full on the performance page; past performance does not guarantee future results.