Working from Greece as a United Kingdom resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Greece

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Greece, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issuePermanent establishment risk

   Signing contracts or managing from Greece creates real PE risk

   Running a foreign company's effective management from Greece, or habitually concluding contracts here, risks creating a Greek permanent establishment or even shifting the company's place of effective management, and corporate tax residence, to Greece. A deemed PE or Greek-resident company is taxed like any other Greek company, currently 22 percent corporate income tax, with the full filing and compliance load that comes with it.

2. Significant issueTax residency

   Past 183 days you are a Greek tax resident from day one

   Physical presence over 183 days, cumulatively, within any rolling 12-month period makes you a Greek tax resident, and the residency backdates to the first day of that presence, not the day you crossed the threshold. As a resident, worldwide income becomes taxable in Greece at progressive rates, 2026 bands of 9, 20, 26, 34, 39 and 44 percent, with the top rate applying above 60,000 euro, subject to whatever relief your specific tax treaty with Greece provides.

3. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   Long stay with no tax treaty risks real double taxation

   Your tax-residence country has no double taxation agreement with Greece, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia all sit outside Greece's treaty network on current research. Past 183 days Greece taxes your worldwide income under domestic law, and with no treaty there is no tie-breaker and no guaranteed relief, only whatever unilateral credit your home country happens to offer.

4. Needs checkingImmigration and visa

   Your nationality needs a Schengen C visa before travel

   Your nationality is not on the Schengen visa-exempt list, so you need a Schengen short-stay (C) visa arranged before you travel to Greece, capped at 90 days within any rolling 180-day period once granted. Overstaying a Schengen status anywhere in the area triggers fines, a possible entry ban and a Schengen-wide SIS alert, and Greece is not notably lenient about it.

5. Needs checkingMoving your company

   Running your foreign company's management from Greece risks its tax home

   If you are a resident director genuinely managing a foreign company from Greece, this risks creating Greek corporate tax residence for that company, place of effective management, or a Greek permanent establishment, pulling its profits into Greek corporate tax.

6. Needs checkingSocial security

   No coordination mechanism, your home rules decide everything

   Outside the EU/EEA and without one of Greece's bilateral totalization agreements, confirmed research covers the US, Canada and Australia, with no confirmed pathway found for Brazil, Singapore, the UAE or Indonesia, there is no certificate-of-coverage mechanism between your home country and Greece. Whether your home coverage keeps running while you are away depends purely on your home country's own domestic rules.

What tends to surprise people here

• The centre-of-vital-interests test can trigger residency well under 183 days
• The 50 percent impatriate tax break does not cleanly cover a pure remote nomad's foreign income
• No tax treaty with Australia, Brazil or Indonesia

Tax treaty between United Kingdom and Greece