Malta · Tax regime
Global Residence Programme
Malta's longest-standing special tax status for third-country nationals. Confers a 15% flat rate on foreign income remitted to Malta, subject to a EUR 15,000 minimum annual tax covering the whole family.
The 183-day-elsewhere rule is the part clients miss: GRP does not require you to live in Malta, but it does require that you do not settle anywhere else, which makes it a regime for the genuinely peripatetic rather than for someone quietly tax-resident in a high-tax state. Foreign capital gains stay outside the Maltese net even when remitted — a genuine structural advantage over most remittance-basis jurisdictions.
Qualifying routes
must be retained throughout the special tax status; may not be sublet
must be retained throughout the special tax status
minimum annual rent
minimum annual rent
The facts
- Qualifying figure
- €220k
- Total landed cost
- EUR 15,000 minimum tax per year for the whole family, plus a one-off application fee (EUR 6,000, reduced to EUR 5,500 where the qualifying property is in South Malta), plus the property cost and professional fees.
- Timeline
- 3–6 months — special tax status determination
- Physical presence
- No minimum stay in Malta, but the holder must not spend more than 183 days in any single other country in a calendar year — the binding constraint is negative, not positive
- Family
- spousedependent childrendependent relatives in defined circumstances
- Permanent residency
- GRP is a tax status, not a permanent residence right; it grants residence permission renewable while conditions hold
- Citizenship
- None via this programme
- Language test
- n/a
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- non-EU, non-EEA, non-Swiss nationalqualifying property owned or leased at the thresholds above, retained throughoutstable and regular resources sufficient to maintain the applicant and dependants without recourse to Maltese social assistancecomprehensive health insurance covering Malta and the EUEUR 15,000 minimum annual taxfit and proper test; application via an Authorised Registered Mandatory
- EUR 15,000 minimum tax is payable whether or not you remit anything — a floor, not a ceiling.
- The qualifying property must be held for the whole life of the status and cannot be sublet; losing it loses the status.
- The 'no more than 183 days in any other single jurisdiction' condition is easy to breach accidentally and hard to unwind.
- GRP status does not by itself make you Maltese tax resident for treaty purposes in every counterparty's eyes; treaty access can be challenged where there is little substance.
- Remitting foreign capital to Malta needs care — the distinction between remitted income and remitted capital is the whole regime, and sloppy banking collapses it.