Hiring a cleaner, gardener or caretaker for a Crete home: the work voucher, the minimum wage and the fine for paying cash

Sooner or later every owner who lives elsewhere needs someone in Crete: to clean before the family arrives, keep the garden alive in August, open the shutters after a storm. As managing a Crete home from abroad puts it, the house needs a local keyholder; the law decides how you pay them. In 2026 there are three clean routes: the εργόσημο work voucher for help at your own home, a self-employed worker who gives you a receipt, and an ordinary declared employee. Undeclared work is fined at €10,500 a worker. In short: for a few hours a week at a private home the voucher is the simplest honest answer, and a holiday let is the point at which you need an accountant. Rules and figures as they stood in October 2026, checked against e-EFKA, the Ministry of Labour, the laws themselves and the tax authority.

I am not a lawyer or an accountant, and this is not legal or tax advice. Employment questions turn on the facts of each arrangement, so have an accountant or a labour lawyer look at yours before the first payment.

The εργόσημο: the household’s payslip

The work voucher dates from 2010 and is still the state’s tool for work in a private home. Article 20 of law 3863/2010 covers staff who work at the employer’s home and are paid by the hour or the day. e-EFKA’s guide, last updated in December 2024, lists household help, gardening, child-minding, care of elderly and disabled people and private lessons, and separately the cleaning and gardening of the common areas of apartment buildings. Only the employer, or someone the employer authorises, issues the voucher, through a payment-service provider such as a bank, and only the worker can cash it, by e-banking or at the counter.

The voucher carries its own insurance. A quarter of the face value is the contribution, split between pension, health and supplementary branches, and e-EFKA turns it into insured days by dividing it by €11.63, up to 25 days a month and 300 a year. A cleaner paid in vouchers builds an insurance record; one paid in cash builds nothing.

What it costs: the minimum wage and a third on top

The legal floor is the national minimum wage, set from 1 April 2026 by ministerial decision 8934/27.3.2026 at €920 a month for employees and €41.09 a day for manual workers. The ministry’s page publishes no hourly rate. On a 40-hour week of six days, the daily figure works out at roughly €6.15 an hour, and the monthly one, paid fourteen times a year, at about €6.20; that is arithmetic, not an official rate. The voucher adds its own arithmetic: because contributions are 25% of the face value, the cost is the agreed net pay plus a third. A gardener you pay €60 a visit costs €80 in vouchers.

Domestic employees are employees. The Ministry of Labour’s guidance on special categories of workers says live-in staff fall outside the working-time and overtime rules, but paid leave and the leave allowance apply to domestic employees. For a few hours a week the sums are small; they belong in your running costs beside the ENFIA.

The self-employed route, and the nine-month rule

The alternative is someone registered as self-employed, who opens an activity at the tax office, pays their own EFKA and issues a receipt for each job through the tax authority’s myDATA system; their side of it is in working self-employed in Crete. You are then a client, not an employer. The label does not settle it, though. The Ministry of Labour’s guidance is that a court decides what a contract really is, and that under law 2639/1998, as replaced by law 3846/2010, services performed personally and exclusively or mainly for the same person for nine consecutive months are presumed to be employment, with the burden on the employer to prove otherwise. A gardener with ten clients is unlikely to be presumed your employee; a housekeeper who works only for you, on your timetable, for a year, may be.

Undeclared work: €10,500 a worker

Paying cash with no voucher, receipt or contract is undeclared work. Article 5 of law 4554/2018 fines it at €10,500 for each undeclared worker, imposed by labour inspectors or social-insurance auditors without first asking for explanations. A repeat finding within three years adds 100%, then 200%. The law presumes the work lasted three months and charges the contributions back, and an appeal does not suspend payment. For employers who declare staff on ERGANI II, e-EFKA’s March 2026 guidance ties the fine to a worker found working before the digital start-of-work notice. The fine drops to €2,000 only if, within ten working days, you hire the person full-time for at least twelve months, which is not a household’s remedy. The article makes no exception for private homes.

When the house is a holiday let or part of a complex

The voucher’s list covers the employer’s home, apartment-building common areas and a few other named jobs; cleaning between paying guests is not on it. Once the letting counts as a business, with three or more properties or hotel-style services as renting out your Crete home explains, the cleaner is staff to be declared on ERGANI II before the first shift, or a contractor who invoices. Where the line falls for one or two let properties is a question for your accountant before the season, not after an inspection. In a complex, cleaning and gardening the common parts is the owners’ shared cost, and the voucher’s apartment-building category may be one way the manager can pay for it.

One tax point for residents. Under article 31(1)(ε) of the income tax code, domestic helpers, drivers, teachers and other staff count towards a Greek tax resident’s deemed living expenses at the minimum pay for the job; the rule is switched off when the household employs only one domestic helper. The presumptions are explained in deemed income and a Crete home.

The honest downside

The voucher costs a third more than cash and some time at a banking screen, and the worker may ask for cash; the law does not care who asked. The εργόσημο’s official guide was last updated in December 2024. The self-employed route can drift into presumed employment without anyone noticing, and the line between a household and a letting business is drawn by facts, not intentions. Absence is no defence either: the voucher is issued by you or someone you authorise, from wherever you are, and the fine is per worker and starts at €10,500.