Serbia Landlord Fine: 150,000 Dinars, Tenant Fine 50,000

A landlord in Serbia who fails to report a tenant to the Tax Administration risks a fine, though the exact range depends on which source you check: 5,000 to 150,000 dinars under one reading, or 15,000 to 200,000 dinars under another. Attorney Lazar Borozan broke down, step by step, what the law asks of the landlord, what it asks of the tenant, and where the limits of each side’s responsibility lie.

What the law requires of a landlord

The Housing and Building Maintenance Act obliges both sides to sign a written lease, though having it notarized is not required. Once the contract is signed, the obligations only begin. “Once the contract is signed, the apartment owner should notify the building manager,” Borozan said, since the manager is legally required to keep records of who lives in the building. If the landlord and tenant have agreed that the tenant will contribute to the building’s maintenance costs, that arrangement should also reach the manager rather than stay as a verbal agreement between the two sides.

The next step comes with a deadline: the landlord must submit a copy of the lease to the relevant Tax Administration office within 30 days of signing. At that point the obligation shifts from the Housing Act to the Personal Income Tax Law and the Law on Tax Procedure and Tax Administration, which govern tax on income from real estate. “The effective tax rate is around 15 percent of the agreed rent,” Borozan said, meaning a landlord renting out a unit for, say, 300 euros a month owes the state roughly 45 euros in tax every month, regardless of whether that amount was actually reported.

How much is the fine for renting out an apartment without registering it?

This is also where most of the confusion over the amounts begins. The fine for a landlord who fails to file a tax return, or files one with inaccurate information, is, according to one citation of the same law, between 5,000 and 150,000 dinars. Another citation of the same regulation, published alongside an identical quote from the same attorney, mentions a range of 15,000 to 200,000 dinars, while the same article later repeats the lower limit of 5,000 dinars. In other words, the figures diverge even within a single article, not just between different outlets, which says a lot about how imprecisely this obligation is explained to the people who actually owe it. On top of the base fine, additional penalties apply if the tax return is filed late or if the tax assessed by a formal decision is not paid.

When does the tax issue become a criminal case?

For larger amounts, the matter stops being an administrative offense and becomes a criminal one. Anyone who, intending to avoid paying tax, conceals facts relevant to determining the tax obligation, where the concealed amount exceeds one million dinars, faces one to five years in prison under the law, along with a fine. Borozan added that the wording of the law also leaves room for the tenant to be held responsible, if the landlord does not pay the tax and the tenant actively takes part in concealing that obligation.

An obligation that falls on the tenant too

The obligations do not end with the Tax Administration. The Law on Permanent and Temporary Residence of Citizens requires tenants to register their temporary or permanent residence, and failing to do so carries a fine of 10,000 to 50,000 dinars. The same fine, according to Borozan, awaits the landlord if they fail to provide the tenant with the documentation and consent needed for that registration, since the law splits this obligation between both sides rather than leaving it to the tenant alone.

In practice, all three obligations, the lease reaching the building manager, the report to the Tax Administration, and the residence registration, are rarely carried out in full. As long as Serbia’s rental market largely runs on verbal agreements and cash changing hands, fines ranging from a few thousand to two hundred thousand dinars remain more of a warning on paper than a real risk for most landlords, at least until some specific case proves otherwise.