Cyprus property taxes, an overview

Property in Cyprus is taxed at moments, not by one annual bill from the Tax Department. You meet a tax when you buy, when you let, and when you sell. Between those events the charges that arrive are mostly local. This page is the map. The calculators and the longer guides are the detail. Where a number is in a statute or on Gov.cy, it is stated. Where a charge varies by town, this page refuses to invent a typical amount.

There is no annual state property tax

The immovable property tax that the Tax Department used to assess on the value of what you owned is not charged for tax years from 2017. Some international guides still list it, because they were written against the old Capital-gains-and-property chapter and not revised. Do not pay it, and do not let it be added to a completion statement as if it were current. If a seller’s lawyer produces an old clearance, that is a clearance for a tax that has stopped, not a bill for this year.

What has not stopped is the municipality or the community. Refuse, local property rates and sewerage charges are set locally. They differ between Limassol, Nicosia, Larnaca, Paphos and a village board. The only honest way to compare them is to ask the authority for the charge on that property. This site will not print a “typical €400” because that would be a made-up number.

When you buy

Two regimes, picked by whether VAT applies.

If VAT applies, the rate is 19 per cent unless the 5 per cent primary-residence rules apply. Those rules, in force since the 2023 amendment, give 5 per cent on the first 130 square metres and up to €350,000, provided the whole area is not over 190 square metres and the whole value is not over €475,000. The rest of a property that is inside the outer limits, but outside the inner ones, is at 19 per cent. Outside the outer limits, there is no 5 per cent at all. The Tax Department publishes a calculator. Use it. Where VAT is charged and the certificate is produced, Gov.cy says the Land Registry transfer fee is not charged.

If VAT does not apply, transfer fees are charged by the Department of Lands and Surveys on a scale of 3 per cent, 5 per cent and 8 per cent, and the legislation then exempts half of that amount. The half-exemption is not given if the seller took the property in a forced sale under Parts VI and VIA of Law 9/1965. The value is the contract price or the Department’s market value, if the Director does not accept the price. Each buyer’s share is scaled separately, so two equal buyers pay less than one buyer of the whole. Missing the six-month deposit of the contract can add 10 per cent to the fee, according to the Department’s leaflet.

Stamp duty is nil if no party signed the contract before 1 January 2026. The old capped scale remains only for a document a party did sign by 31 December 2025.

A non-EU buyer also needs the Ministry of Interior’s acquisition permission before title is registered. The Ministry says the permission itself has no fee. The limits on what may be bought are on that page: up to 4,000 square metres of land for a home, or up to two units within the sizes it states.

When you let

Gross rent is subject to income tax after a 20 per cent deduction, and after other costs that qualify, such as interest on the purchase loan. The 2026 bands start with a nil rate on the first €22,000. GHS is 2.65 per cent of gross rent for an individual owner, on the Tax Department’s rental page, subject to a ceiling this site does not state because it is not copying an unverified figure. Special Defence Contribution on rent is not charged for 2026. It was 3 per cent of 75 per cent of the rent, for a domiciled resident, through 2025.

A long let and a platform holiday let are not always the same kind of income. A 2023 circular can treat some short stays as business income. Read it before you apply the 20 per cent deduction to a holiday let.

When you sell

Capital gains tax is 20 per cent of the gain, after the official inflation adjustment and after disposal costs. Individuals have lifetime exemptions which the consolidated law on CyLaw now sets at €30,000 generally, €50,000 for agricultural land sold by a farmer, and €150,000 for a qualifying main residence. They do not stack. Companies do not get them. The Tax Department’s clearance is part of the transfer. A separate levy for the Central Agency for the Equal Distribution of Burdens is collected in completions. Practitioners put it at 0.4 per cent of the price. Pay whatever the Agency assesses. This page has not reproduced the Agency’s own table.

What this overview leaves out on purpose

It leaves out a guess at legal fees, agent’s commission, utility deposits and insurance. Those are contracts. It leaves out the income-tax exemptions for foreign dividends and for certain employment income, because they are not property taxes, and the conditions are easy to overstate. It leaves out double-tax treaties. A non-resident seller of Cyprus land is still within Cyprus capital gains tax. A treaty may change the share analysis. It will not repeal the Tax Department’s form.

If you only read one other page, read the one that matches the moment you are in: the transfer-fee calculator, the VAT calculator, the rental calculator, or the capital-gains calculator. Each of them repeats the rule it uses and links the source, and each of them is an illustration of that rule, not an assessment.