Cyprus income tax 2026: 0% up to €22,000, 183 days, or the 60-day rule

Cyprus gives two separate ways into tax residence, and its best known one is unusually short. Under the Income Tax Law 118(I) of 2002, as the Cypriot authority describes it in the sheet it supplied to the OECD, you are resident if your days in Cyprus add up to more than 183. You are also resident if you spend at least 60 days and fewer than 184 there, and four things are true together: you owned or rented a permanent home in Cyprus; you were not resident in another country for more than 183 days; you were not tax resident in another country; and you had a business, a job or an office in Cyprus that was not terminated by the end of the year. The first test is a count. The second is a count plus four conditions, and the counter above can only help with the count. The Cyprus Tax Department's own website refused our reader, so this page rests on that sheet, dated 28 April 2023, and on the government's business portal, which confirms the existence of the 60-day rule and gives the 2026 bands.

2026 income tax bands: a higher tax-free slice

Tax year 2026, on taxable income after exemptions and allowances. The 0% band rises from €19,500 to €22,000.

These bands apply to taxable income, what is left after the exemptions and allowances the law permits. The Business in Cyprus portal does not list those, and we do not list them from memory either. On the bands alone, €30,000 of taxable income carries €1,600 of tax, €50,000 carries €6,900 and €100,000 carries €23,300. Below €22,000 the tax is nothing, but the portal shows that the duty to register no longer depends on income alone.

From the 2026 tax year, registration falls on people whose gross income comes within article 5 of the Income Tax Law, and on Cyprus tax residents aged 25 or more and not yet 71 on 31 December, whatever they earn. In the 2025 tax year, the test was gross income above €19,500. So moving to Cyprus for a low-income year can still create a filing step.

What the sheet says about scope, and what it leaves out

We have to be plain here. The texts we could open give the test for residence and the bands, but they do not set out in their own words what a resident pays on as against a non-resident. That statement sits on the Tax Department's site, which answers 403 to our reader, and we chose not to reconstruct it from secondary sources. The same goes for the special defence contribution and for the detail of the non-domicile regime. An article on the site of Invest Cyprus, the government's promotion agency, signed by a private firm, says that non-domiciled residents get an exemption on worldwide dividends and passive interest for 17 years. It is a promotional text, so treat it as a lead to check with the Tax Department, and not as the rule.

The 60-day rule, condition by condition

The fourth condition deserves its own warning, because the 60 days do not rescue someone whose former country still treats them as resident. A person with a family and a home elsewhere can meet every Cypriot count and still fail on that line. The sheet's wording on the last condition is also dated: it speaks of an activity "not terminated on 31/12/2021", which looks tied to an earlier tax year. We read it as the last day of the relevant year, and the Tax Department is the one to confirm this.

How Cyprus counts a day: departures do not count

Many countries count any part of a day. Cyprus has a rule of its own, and the sheet spells it out. The day you leave counts as a day outside Cyprus, the day you arrive counts as a day inside. A same-day visit counts as one day, and leaving and coming back on the same day also counts as one. Our engine follows this exactly: a stay from Monday to Friday is four days, not five. Each return trip therefore costs one day less than a calendar suggests, which is why a person with many short trips needs real dates instead of a rough total.

The test is not a slide over 12 months. Because the threshold works year by year, a stay that runs across December and January splits in two, and a long winter can leave two years below 183. The sample dates above show the opposite risk: two stays that clear 60 days without coming close to 183, which is the exact situation in which the conditions matter most.

Leaving your old country is a separate test

Whatever Cyprus decides, the country you left runs its own analysis, and the 60-day route makes that link explicit by requiring that you are tax resident nowhere else. Check that side first. For the UK, a move does not switch off the Statutory Residence Test, and it counts UK midnights and ties. For France, the domestic test looks at home, work and economic interests. For Germany, a dwelling kept and used keeps you liable. If you stay below 183 days everywhere and meet the 60-day conditions nowhere, you may be tax resident in no country, which brings problems of its own, covered under digital nomad tax residency.

Compare the Cypriot route with others in the country table, and see dual tax residency if two countries claim you. We have not reviewed Cyprus's treaties here. The Taxlag app follows each country's way of counting, departure day included.