Malta Withholding tax rates
Malta Withholding tax rates: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
The withholding taxes Malta levies on payments to non-residents - which for dividends, interest and royalties is in each case NIL under the Income Tax Act (Cap. 123): dividends because of the full imputation system, and interest and royalties because article 12(1)(c) exempts them in the hands of non-residents, subject to stated conditions. Administered by the Malta Tax and Customs Administration (formerly CFR).
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Income Tax Act, Cap. 123 of the Laws of Malta: art. 12(1)(c)(i) - 'There shall be exempt from the tax ... any interest, discount, premium or royalties accruing to or derived by any person not resident in Malta', subject to the provisos on permanent establishment and Maltese ownership/control; art. 59(1)(a) - a company 'shall be entitled to deduct from the amount of any dividend ... a tax at the rate paid or payable by the company ... on the income out of which such dividend is paid' (full imputation - the deduction is company tax already paid, credited to the shareholder under art. 60, not an additional withholding). |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THERE IS NO SINGLE WITHHOLDING TAX RATE, WHICH IS WHY value IS NULL - and in Malta's case there is, in the general non-resident case, NO withholding tax at all on any of the three payment types: dividends, interest and royalties each carry a 0% entry below, each with its own distinct statutory basis and conditions. A caller wanting a number must name which payment type and check that entry's conditions; read withholding_rates rather than expecting a headline figure. ALL RATES ARE DOMESTIC STATUTORY RATES, BEFORE TREATY RELIEF. We do NOT serve treaty rates: they are bilateral, run to thousands of country pairs, and applying one is a legal determination rather than a lookup. For Malta the point is largely moot - the domestic rates are already zero, so treaties and the EU Parent-Subsidiary and Interest & Royalties Directives (Malta IS an EU member, so both apply) have nothing to reduce; they matter only as a fallback where the domestic conditions fail. THE ZEROS ARE CONDITIONAL, NOT ABSOLUTE. The art. 12(1)(c) exemption for interest and royalties fails where the non-resident carries on trade or business in Malta through a permanent establishment to which the income is effectively connected, or where the recipient is owned and controlled by, or acts on behalf of, individuals ordinarily resident AND domiciled in Malta. When it fails, the income becomes ordinary chargeable income of the non-resident taxed by assessment under the normal rules (non-resident rates or 35% company rate) - there is NO flat withholding rate to quote for that case, which is why no such rate appears here. Similarly the dividend zero assumes the general case; distributions from a company's untaxed account attract a 15% deduction under arts. 61-69, but only where the 'recipient' as defined in art. 61 is a Malta-resident person or a non-resident owned and controlled by (or acting on behalf of) individuals ordinarily resident and domiciled in Malta - a genuinely foreign-owned non-resident is outside that definition. NO effective_from IS ASSERTED at series or rate level: the consolidated Act states no commencement date for these long-standing provisions and we do not supply one from memory.
Get it programmatically
curl https://euroref.dev/v1/mt/withholding-tax
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://euroref.dev/v1/mt/withholding-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/mt/withholding-taxOther Malta series: Policy interest rate · Value added tax (VAT) · VAT registration threshold · National minimum wage · Public holidays · Consumer price index (annual inflation, HICP) · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions · Corporate income tax · ECB main refinancing operations rate (fixed rate) · Late-payment interest (EU Late Payment Directive) · Statutory legal interest (Civil Code art. 1139)
The same figure elsewhere: Netherlands · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · all 34