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Do I have to file a tax return?
From the tax year 2026, every tax resident aged 25 to 70 must file a return, even with no income at all. Up to the tax year 2025 only people earning more than €19,500 had to. The first returns under the new rule are due by 31 July 2027.
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Until 2025, if your gross income was €19,500 a year or less, you did not have to file a tax return; at that income there was no income tax to pay. The 2026 reform changed that.
What the rules say
Who files. From the tax year 2026, everyone who is tax resident in Cyprus and is aged 25 to 70 on 31 December files a return, whatever they earned, even nothing. Residents of any age with income file too, and so do non-residents with income from Cyprus. The only people left out are residents without income who are under 25 or over 70; the Council of Ministers can exempt other groups by decree, and we found no such decree by October 2026. Tax resident means, under the Income Tax Law, more than 183 days a year in Cyprus, or at least 60 days if you also work, run a business or hold an office here, keep a home here and spend no more than 183 days in any other single country.
By when. The return for 2026 is due by 31 July 2027, and any tax still owed must be paid by the same date. People whose accounts must be audited have until 31 January 2028.
Where. Returns for 2026 onward are filed only through Tax For All, the Tax Department's new system, which you enter with CY Login. TAXISnet is used for the last time for 2025.
You will need a tax number. Every resident aged 25 or over, and anyone with income, must be registered with the Tax Department and have a tax identification number. People without income who are not yet registered have until 31 December 2027.
What being late costs. €150 for missing the deadline, up from €100, and €300 if you are sent a notice and still do not file, up from €200. There is no charge if you file within an extension the Tax Department announces for everyone. Tax paid late costs 5%, another 5% after two months, and interest.
What the numbers say
In 2025 the Tax Department received 383,686 returns from individuals, up from 326,475 in 2023. Eurostat counts about 616,000 residents aged 25 to 70. By our subtraction the difference is roughly 230,000. The two counts do not measure quite the same people, and some returns are late ones for earlier years, so this is only a rough idea of how many may be filing for the first time; there is no official estimate.
The deadline in the law has rarely been the real one.
The final date for individual returns, by tax year, after extensions. The height is the number of days after 31 July of the following year.
← swipe to see the full chart →
Tax Department, page on the individual tax return, table of past deadlines; tax year 2025 extended by decree to 31 October 2026. The date in the law is 31 July of the following year.
Of the eight tax years from 2017 to 2024, only 2018 kept the deadline of 31 July; the others were extended, by as much as four and a half months. Returns for 2025 can be filed until 31 October 2026.
What it means for you
If you earn little or nothing, you still file once a year, but there should be nothing to pay. If your taxable income is €22,000 or less, a deduction saves you nothing either, because there is no tax to reduce; deductions do not turn into payments.
If you have a family, filing on time now matters. The new deductions for children, for rent or mortgage interest on your home, and for green home upgrades or an electric car are granted only if both partners, or a single person or single parent, file on time, and partners agree, on the return, to share their tax data with each other. They come with income limits: €100,000 for a family with up to two children, €150,000 with three or four, €200,000 with five or more, and €40,000 for a single person. Employees can claim them during the year on form TD59, so that less tax is withheld from pay; What changed in January has the amounts.
If you moved here, the rule applies to you as soon as you are tax resident and aged 25 to 70 on 31 December, or at any age if you have income, whether or not your income is taxed in Cyprus.
This is a summary of the rules as published in October 2026, not tax advice.
What people argue
A burden or a better register? Supporters of the rule argue that a return from every adult gives the state a full picture of incomes, which it needs for targeted benefits, the family deductions and fighting evasion, and that the new deductions only work if both partners' incomes are known. Critics answer that hundreds of thousands of people with simple pay slips, or none, must now deal with a tax system they never needed, through a new platform, and can be charged €150 if they miss the final date, even though that date has usually been extended.
Will the system cope? By October 2026 no individual return had yet gone through Tax For All. It handled about 745,000 VAT and employer returns in 2025. As the Cyprus Mail reported, its use for individual returns was put back by a year, and more than 12,000 accountants and employers attended training.
How we know
The rules are from the amending tax law of 31 December 2025 (243(I)/2025), the law on the assessment and collection of taxes, the Tax Department's frequently asked questions of May 2026 and its page on the individual return, read on 3 October 2026. The 2025 extension is from decree 260/2026. The numbers of returns are from the Tax Department's annual reports for 2024 and 2025; the population aged 25 to 70 is from Eurostat for 1 January 2025. The past deadlines are from the Tax Department's table on its return page. The delay and the figure of 12,000 trained are as reported by the Cyprus Mail; the Tax Department's own page confirms that 2025 returns stay on TAXISnet.