Malta VAT Calculator — 2026 Rates

Malta charges 18% VAT — lower than every EU member state except Luxembourg. Beneath that headline it runs four reduced bands, which is a lot of structure for a country of half a million people, and it is where most Maltese VAT errors are made.

18%: the EU's second-lowest standard rate

Malta's standard VAT rate is 18%. Only Luxembourg, at 17%, is lower. At the other end of the table Hungary charges 27%, Denmark, Croatia and Sweden 25%, and neighbouring Greece 24%. Malta's rate has not moved since 1 January 2004, which by European standards is unusual stability — over the same two decades Greece went from 18% to 24%, Ireland from 21% to 23% and Poland from 22% to 23%.

The practical effect is easiest to see on a single price. €100 net becomes €118 in Malta, €117 in Luxembourg, €121 in Spain, €124 in Greece and €127 in Hungary. If you are reverse-engineering a Maltese gross figure, the divisor is 1.18.

VAT is administered by the Malta Tax and Customs Administration (MTCA) under the Commissioner for Tax and Customs — the body that absorbed the old separate VAT Department and Inland Revenue. Maltese law calls the tax Value Added Tax in English and Taxxa fuq il-Valur Miżjud in Maltese, and because English is an official language, Maltese invoices, guidance and the VAT Act itself are all published in English.

Four reduced bands, added one at a time

Most EU states run one or two reduced rates. Malta runs three plus a zero rate, and the reason is historical rather than designed: each band was legislated separately for a separate policy reason, and none was ever consolidated. All of them sit in the Eighth Schedule to the Value Added Tax Act; the exemptions sit in the Fifth Schedule.

12% — the newest band, in force since 1 January 2024

Legal Notice 231 of 2023 introduced a 12% rate with effect from 1 January 2024, transposing paragraph 5 of Article 105a of Council Directive 2006/112/EC as amended by Council Directive (EU) 2022/542 — the provision that required Member States to set out detailed rules for reduced rates of not less than 12% on specific transactions. The list is short and deliberately technical. Everything on it previously sat at 18%:

• Custody and management of securities
• Management of credit and credit guarantees by a person other than the one who granted the credit
• Certain services relating to the care of the human body
• Hire of a pleasure boat, where the charter or short-term lease does not exceed five weeks

That five-week ceiling is not incidental. It is what keeps the measure inside the short-term hire category the VAT Directive permits at a reduced rate, and for a Malta-based charter operator it is the single fact that decides whether a booking is taxed at 12% or 18%. Given the size of Malta's yachting sector, that one line has more revenue riding on it than the rest of the band combined.

7% — accommodation and sporting facilities

The 7% band applies to the provision of accommodation in premises required to be licensed under the Malta Travel and Tourism Services Act: hotels, guesthouses, holiday camps and camping sites. Since 1 January 2018 it has also covered the use of sporting facilities under item 11 of the Eighth Schedule — and VAT Department guidelines issued on 28 November 2017 extended that treatment to movable equipment used exclusively for physical activity, which brings gym equipment inside the band rather than leaving it at 18%.

The rate covers the accommodation supply itself and nothing more. Restaurant meals, bar spend, spa treatments and excursions billed to the same room account are separate supplies, generally at 18%. A Maltese hotel folio is therefore a genuinely mixed document, and the correct method is to classify each line, apply the right divisor to each, and only then total — not to apply one rate to the bottom line.

5% — the long-standing social band

The 5% rate is the oldest and broadest of the reduced bands: electricity, medical accessories, printed matter including electronic publications, certain confectionery, admission to museums, art exhibitions, concerts and theatres, minor repairs of bicycles, shoes and leather goods, clothing and household linen, domestic care services, items for the exclusive use of people with a disability, and the importation of works of art, collectors' items and antiques. The repair entries are the ones people forget — a cobbler in Valletta charges 5%, the shoe shop next door charges 18%.

0% — exempt with credit

Malta zero-rates exports outside the EU, intra-EU B2B supplies, food for human consumption as defined in the legislation, pharmaceuticals, and scheduled inter-island and international passenger transport — the Gozo ferry included. These are exempt with credit supplies, so input VAT on related costs remains recoverable. That is a materially different position from the exempt without credit categories in the Fifth Schedule — financial services, insurance, health and education — where input VAT is blocked and mixed businesses end up in partial exemption calculations.

Registration: Article 10, Article 11 and Article 12

Maltese VAT registration is described by article of the VAT Act rather than by label, and the three you will meet are:

The Article 11 threshold is now a single €35,000 covering goods and services alike. Until the end of 2024 Malta ran split thresholds — a higher figure for suppliers of goods and a lower one for suppliers of services — and Act XXXVIII of 2024, together with Legal Notices 345 to 353 of 2024, replaced them with one number from 1 January 2025. Cross €35,000 during a calendar year and you must move to Article 10. A business with no establishment in Malta gets no threshold at all and registers from its first taxable supply.

Articles 11A and 11B: the cross-border SME scheme

Malta implemented the EU's cross-border small-enterprise scheme at the same time as the threshold reform, as two new articles:

• Article 11A — a small undertaking established in Malta may apply for VAT exemption on supplies it makes in other Member States, provided total annual turnover across the whole Union stays under €100,000 and it meets each host state's own conditions.
• Article 11B — a small undertaking established elsewhere in the EU may supply goods or services in Malta under exemption, without taking an Article 10 registration, if it meets the Article 11B conditions.

Before 2025 a small foreign supplier had only two routes into Malta: full local registration or the One Stop Shop. The SME scheme is a third, and it sits beside OSS rather than replacing it. Which is better depends on the shape of your sales — concentrated in a few states below their local thresholds favours the SME scheme; spread thinly across many states usually favours OSS.

Filing, and Malta's unusually long deadline

Article 10 registrations file quarterly, and the return and payment are due one month and 15 days after the end of the period — so a quarter ending 31 March is due by 15 May. That is a longer window than most Member States allow and one of the quieter advantages of Maltese registration. Monthly or annual cycles can apply in specific cases, typically where turnover or a persistent refund position warrants it. Article 11 small undertakings file a simplified declaration once a year instead.

E-invoicing: nothing mandatory yet

As of 2026 Malta has no domestic B2B or B2C e-invoicing mandate, and no real-time reporting or fiscalisation obligation. What exists is the B2G requirement common to all Member States — public authorities must be able to receive electronic invoices — with voluntary issuance over the Peppol network. The MTCA flagged e-invoicing and digital reporting in its Pre-Budget Consultation Document 2026 as part of preparing for the EU's VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) package, under which mandatory e-invoicing for cross-border B2B transactions arrives across the Union in 2030. For now, Malta is a jurisdiction to monitor rather than one with an active mandate — a marked contrast with Greece, Poland or Italy.

Malta VAT formulas

The calculator above applies these. Swap in 1.12, 1.07 or 1.05 for the reduced bands.

Add 18% VAT (net → gross)

Remove 18% VAT (gross → net)

Remove 7% VAT from a licensed accommodation charge