Your municipal bill

Income tax and VAT go to the state. The bills that come from your town are separate, they are not called taxes, and nobody adds them up for you. We tried.

What the numbers say

We took one household: a flat with an official valuation of €200,000, using 120 cubic metres of water a year, with no discount. Then we looked for the four charges it pays on the websites of all twenty municipalities and the five district organisations that now run water and sewerage.

For three municipalities all four can be found, one of them only on an old page. In Nicosia the bill comes to €568 a year, in Kourion to €618 and in Strovolos to €623.

The parts are not equally variable. Refuse collection costs between €150 and €200 a year wherever it is published; the law caps it at €250. Water for that household costs between €183 and €207. That is the water charge alone: the sewerage fee charged per cubic metre, €60 to €77 for 120 cubic metres where it is charged, is counted below under sewerage. Your electricity and water bill takes a smaller household, 100 cubic metres, and adds that fee to water, which is why its figure, about €230, is higher. The municipal property fee is small, €38 to €70.

Sewerage is where towns differ. It is charged partly as a rate on the value of your home and partly on the water you use, and the rate on value varies more than tenfold from one area to another. For the same flat it is €32 in Lefkara, where only storm drains are charged, €116 in the Nicosia municipality zone, €192 in Strovolos and €226 in Athienou. In the Famagusta district it is about €127 for an owner-occupier in Ayia Napa and about €277 in the tourist area of Paralimni, the most we found. It can change from one street to the next: part of Strovolos pays €76 less than the rest.

What it means for you

About €600 a year is €50 a month. Unlike income tax, it does not fall when your income does. Reductions exist for pensioners, large families and people on low incomes, and every municipality sets its own.

If you own a more valuable home, the sewerage charge and property fee rise in proportion. A house valued at €400,000 in Strovolos pays about €250 a year in sewerage on its valuation alone.

To find your own figures, look at three bills: the municipality's yearly notice for refuse and the property fee, the water bill, and the yearly sewerage notice from the district organisation.

What people argue

Why can't the rates be found? For twelve of the twenty municipalities we found no published refuse fee for a household, and for fifteen no property fee rate, even after a second search. Among the ten largest, Larnaca, Amathounta and Paralimni-Deryneia publish neither. Several publish the discounts but not the amount being discounted. The 2024 reform of local government merged municipalities and moved water and sewerage to district organisations; it did not create a common place to publish charges. The town hall that spends five cents in the euro maps which municipalities publish a budget at all.

Is sewerage charged fairly? A charge on property value means two households using the same water can pay very different amounts, and an empty flat still pays the part based on value. The argument for it is that the network serves the property whether or not anyone is home. The argument against is that a charge on use rewards saving water. The districts mix the two in different proportions: in Dromolaxia-Meneou the district's table shows the whole charge on value, in Nicosia more than half of this flat's charge is on use.

Should the municipalities raise more themselves? The municipalities say the state grant is too small and not indexed. The other view is that they could raise more from their own property fee, which is a few tens of euro a year on a typical flat.

How we know

Every rate was read on 2 October 2026 on the municipality's or district organisation's own website or published notice. The totals are our arithmetic for the household described; your bill will differ.

The years are mixed. We used 2026 rates where they were published and the latest stated year otherwise: the refuse fee is for 2025 in Strovolos and for 2022 in Kourion. Kourion's page is the oldest we relied on: it was written for the former municipality of Ypsonas, which is now part of Kourion, and its property fee rate carries no date. The Nicosia property fee is the 2025 rate, which the council decided in January 2026 to keep.

Two assumptions matter. We added 5% VAT to the Nicosia water charge, as the other districts state for theirs. And we applied the Limassol district's household water tariff to Kourion, and the Larnaca district's to Athienou and Lefkara, though their pages do not list the areas they cover. Water and sewerage rates are published by the district organisations, not the municipalities. The Nicosia figures do not apply in Aglantzia, where refuse is paid for by the bag.

The Famagusta district's sewerage rates for 2026 are from its notice in the Official Gazette of 11 September 2026; its storm-drainage rate is the 2025 one. Its water tariff is published, but not how often it is billed, so we could not cost a year of water there, and Ayia Napa and Paralimni-Deryneia publish neither of their own two charges. That is why they are not in the chart. Aradippou's refuse fee, €190, is from an undated page of the municipality that gives one amount for homes.

A second search, on 3 October 2026, found a few more figures only in the press or in a party's statement, among them a refuse schedule and property rate for Limassol and a property rate for Paphos. We have not used them. "Not published" means we did not find it on the official site, by its search, in the Gazette or by a web search. A notice may exist that we missed.