Sensationally short-term for Greek standards, the Greek authorities have decided to postpone the start of the newly introduced boat tax from November 26th of this year to April 2nd, 2019. The postponement was protests by the cruiser department and the preceded by Swedish and British Cruising Association. Too much was simply still unclear: How and where exactly the owners should register, how the tax has to be paid, what happens if the owners are not on site by the start of the season.
However, there was at least some additional information from the authorities. Apparently, an electronic payment should now be possible via the Greek online tax portal E-Taxis-Net. Since this is currently only available in Greek, this is unlikely to be practical. In addition, you have to register in order to use it. It remains unclear whether and how on-site payment can be made temporarily at the port authorities. Such attempts already turned out to be a problem with the introduction of the new Dekpa document in 2017: Those who wanted to purchase the fishing permit, were sometimes asked by port offices to deposit the money at a local bank into an account of the Greek tax authorities. The receipt then had to be presented to the port authorities. However, this was possible on weekends and sometimes not all afternoons due to the limited opening times of the banks. This resulted in long and very annoying waiting times on site.
It is now to be hoped that the authorities will find an easier way before the start of the season and implement this in a practical manner.