What this covers
Someone has died with assets in Cyprus, or you are planning around Cyprus assets you will one day leave behind, and you want to know what the Republic will take. The short answer is nothing, and it has been nothing for a quarter of a century.
That answer is also where most guides stop, which is unhelpful, because the absence of an inheritance tax does not mean the absence of obligations. This guide covers the abolition and then the four things that actually apply on a death in Cyprus: what the personal representative must file, what the Land Registry charges, what capital gains tax base cost the heir inherits, and where a foreign estate tax can still reach a Cyprus asset.
The rule
There is no inheritance tax, estate duty or succession tax in Cyprus for anyone who died on or after 1 January 2000.
The abolishing statute is the Estate Duty (Amending) Law of 2000, Law 74(I)/2000, published in Supplement I(I) to the Official Gazette of the Republic, No. 3413, on 16 June 2000. It is one operative section long. Section 2, headed “Repeal and savings”, says:
The basic law is repealed in relation to persons who died on or after 1 January 2000: Provided that the provisions of the basic law continue to apply in cases of persons who died before that date.
The “basic law” is the Estate Duty Law of 1962, Law 67/1962, together with its amendments up to 1997. The Tax Department indexes it as N.67(I)/1962 and still publishes its consolidated text, because it is still live law for pre-2000 deaths.
Two features of that drafting matter more than the headline:
The trigger is the date of death, not the date of transfer or of probate. An estate where the death occurred in 1998 and the property has still not been transferred is governed by the 1962 law. An estate opened yesterday is not.
There is no threshold, no rate and no residence or domicile test to apply. The charge is simply gone. The Tax Department states the position in its own words on its deceased estates page: from 1 January 2000 the Estate Duty Law of 1962 was repealed, so estate duty is no longer imposed by the Tax Department, and regardless of the size of the estate, heirs are not charged inheritance duties.
Under the old 1962 law the top marginal rate reached 30%, the charge caught worldwide assets where the deceased was domiciled in Cyprus, and it reached gifts made within three years of death. None of that survives for a modern death. If you are reading planning advice that discusses Cyprus domicile in an estate duty context, it is at least twenty-five years out of date.
What still applies on death
| Obligation | Who it falls on | Deadline | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statement of the deceased’s assets and liabilities | Executor or administrator | Six months from the date of death | Law 78(I)/2000, s.6(1) |
| Tax clearance certificate before probate | Executor or administrator | Before the court will act | Law 78(I)/2000, s.7 |
| Written consent before assets move | Banks, insurers, the Land Registry, company officers | Before any transfer or withdrawal | Law 78(I)/2000, s.5(3) |
| Everything the deceased would have had to do | Executor or administrator | As it would have fallen due | Law 78(I)/2000, s.4 |
Estate duty was not simply deleted. On the same day, in the same Gazette issue, Parliament passed the Deceased Persons’ Estate (Tax Provisions) Law of 2000, Law 78(I)/2000, which took effect from 1 January 2000 for persons who died on or after that date. It carries the administration that estate duty used to carry, without the tax.
The six month statement
Section 6(1) requires the legal representatives to file with the Tax Commissioner, within six months of the date of death, a statement of the assets and liabilities of the deceased’s personal or business estate, or both, whether situated in the Republic or abroad. The statement must also cover all of the deceased’s dependants, and the surviving spouse where that spouse had no taxable income at the date of death. A certified copy of the will goes with it, if there is one.
That is a wider disclosure than most families expect. It is not a valuation exercise for a tax that no longer exists; it is how the Department satisfies itself that the deceased’s own income tax, defence contribution and capital gains position is settled before the estate is distributed.
The form is T.F.78, the Statement of Assets, which the Department issues under both section 6 of Law 78(I)/2000 and section 27 of the Assessment and Collection of Taxes Law 4/1978.
The certificate that gates probate
Section 7 is the provision with teeth. A will is not admitted to probate and letters of administration are not granted without a certificate from the Tax Commissioner, deposited with the court, stating that he has no objection.
The application for that certificate is form T.F.701. The Department’s published checklist for the file is specific, and it differs depending on whether there is a court order:
- With a court order: T.F.701, a copy of the death certificate, a certified copy of the administration application and the administrator’s affidavit, then at the second stage a copy of the administration order, form T.F.78, form T.F.2101 (Certificate of Full Disclosure), a detailed Electricity Authority account statement from first connection to date for any property with buildings on it, and copies of the evidence for every asset declared.
- Without a court order: the death certificate, a certificate of heirs from the community leader, T.F.701, T.F.2101, T.F.78, the same Electricity Authority statement and the same evidence.
The Department will not open the file at all unless the deceased has a Cyprus tax identification number. If there is none, the administrators or heirs have to register the deceased first. Applications are made in person or by post to a District Office, not online, because the forms must be signed in original by all the heirs or by the named administrators. Incomplete applications are refused and posted back.
The freeze on the estate’s assets
Section 5(3) stops the estate moving before the Department has agreed it should. No asset of the deceased may be transferred or disposed of, no money standing to the deceased’s credit at a bank or other financial institution may be withdrawn, and no insurance policy may be cashed in, without the Tax Commissioner’s approval. The prohibition binds the counterparty as well as the family: the Director of the Department of Lands and Surveys, and the secretary or director of the company, bank, financial institution or insurer, must not act without written authorisation from the Commissioner.
Section 5(4) adds that a bank manager must not allow a safe deposit box rented by the deceased to be opened without first inviting the Commissioner to be represented at the opening.
Section 5(1) makes any taxes payable by the legal representatives a first charge on each asset the deceased held or could dispose of at death, ranking ahead of leases and encumbrances created before or after the death, subject to protections for a good faith purchaser and for mortgages and pledges documented before the date of death.
The deceased’s own tax position
Section 4 puts the personal representative in the deceased’s shoes. The legal representatives carry the same tax liability the deceased had at the date of death, to the extent the estate can meet it, and must do everything the deceased would have been obliged to do had they lived under the income tax legislation, the assessment and collection of taxes legislation, the special contribution legislation, the defence contribution legislation, the immovable property tax legislation and the capital gains legislation. Law 147(I)/2017 added VAT to that list with effect from 20 October 2017.
So the final income tax return is filed by the executor or administrator, not by anybody else, and the estate pays out of the estate.
Penalties
Section 8 sets three offences: failing, refusing or delaying compliance with the section 6 disclosure duties; submitting a false statement of assets or false information; and a legal representative who fraudulently or deliberately submits false material to escape the section 6 duties, which carries a fine, imprisonment of up to six months, or both.
The consolidated text still expresses those fines in Cyprus pounds, at £500, £1,000 and £2,000 respectively. Cyprus adopted the euro in 2008 and we have not found a primary document restating them, so treat the amounts as indicative and the offences as real.
Who you are allowed to leave it to
No inheritance tax does not mean a free hand. Cyprus applies forced heirship, and it is set out in the Wills and Succession Law, Cap. 195, not in any tax statute. This is the part that most often surprises people who have satisfied themselves there is no death tax here.
Section 41 caps the disposable portion, meaning the share of the net estate you may dispose of by will:
| Who survives you | Most you can leave by will |
|---|---|
| A spouse and a child, or a child’s descendant | One quarter of the net estate |
| A child or a child’s descendant, no spouse | One quarter of the net estate |
| A spouse, or a parent, but no children or their descendants | One half of the net estate |
| No spouse, no children or their descendants, no parent | The whole estate |
The remainder, the statutory portion, passes to the close family the law names, whatever the will says. A will is not void for exceeding the disposable portion. Section 41(2) instead reduces and cuts down the excess disposition proportionally until it fits. The practical result is the same: gifts to anyone outside the statutory heirs shrink, sometimes to a fraction of what was intended.
There used to be a way out. Section 42, headed “absolute freedom of disposition in certain cases”, exempted certain people, in practice those of British origin, from section 41 altogether. It was repealed by Law 96(I)/2015 and now reads simply “deleted”. Guidance written before 2015, and advice from anyone relying on it, is wrong on precisely the point that matters most to foreign nationals holding Cyprus property.
This is a legal question rather than a tax one, and the interaction with EU Regulation 650/2012, under which a person may in some circumstances elect the law of their nationality to govern succession, is exactly the kind of thing to take to a Cyprus lawyer before signing a will. What matters here is knowing the constraint exists.
What the Land Registry charges
A lawful heir taking Cyprus immovable property, whether under a will or on intestacy, pays no fee to register the title. Section 7(1)(a) of the Department of Lands and Surveys (Fees and Charges) Law, Cap. 219, removes the Chapter 3 and Chapter 3A fees outright in that case. “Lawful heir” takes its meaning from the Wills and Succession Law.
There is no transfer fee on the transmission either. The 3%, 5% and 8% scale in Chapter 17 of the Schedule is charged on sales, auction purchases and certain gifts. Inheritance by a lawful heir does not enter it.
Where it costs something is when a will benefits someone outside the statutory class of heirs:
| Who takes the property | Fee |
|---|---|
| Lawful heir, by will or on intestacy | None |
| Under a will, to someone who is not a lawful heir | 3 per 1,000 of the market value at 1 January 2013 prices |
| Under a will, to a child, spouse or relative within the third degree | Charged as if it were a gift from the testator, under Chapter 3(b)(ii) and (iii) |
| Any property in the occupied areas with no 1 January 2013 value | None, until the abnormal situation ends |
One further trap sits in the same paragraph. If an administrator, having obtained a court order, makes a transfer declaration by way of gift to someone who is not a lawful heir of the deceased, the fee is calculated on the market value of the property at the date of the transfer declaration, on the full Chapter 17 scale, unless the court order says otherwise. Distributing an estate to a non-heir by gift rather than under the will is therefore an expensive route.
Section 7A also confirms that no fee is charged on transferring a mortgage to a lawful heir of a person who has died, by will or on intestacy.
Capital gains tax: the part that costs real money
Nothing is charged when the property passes to the heir. Article 10(a) of the Capital Gains Tax Law 52/1980 excludes transfer by reason of death from the meaning of “disposal” entirely, and the Tax Department lists transfer by reason of death, that is succession, among its exempt disposals.
The bill arrives later, and it is larger than most heirs expect, because of the proviso attached to Article 10(a):
Provided that in such a case the value of the property is taken to be the value at the time of acquisition, or the adjusted acquisition value at the time the deceased acquired the property, or its value on 1 January 1980, whichever of those dates is the later.
The heir does not get a fresh start at the date of death value. The heir inherits the deceased’s acquisition value and the deceased’s acquisition date. Every euro of growth during the deceased’s ownership stays inside the taxable gain and lands on the heir when the heir eventually sells.
That is the opposite of the step up to probate value that readers from the United States, and from several other systems, will be assuming.
There is one relief in the same paragraph. If the deceased acquired the property before 14 July 1974, the person making the later disposal may elect to take the 14 July 1974 value instead. For older Cyprus holdings that election is often worth more than any exemption.
How indexation then works
Indexation is applied to the acquisition cost, and the Tax Department states both month rules on its capital gains page: use the price index of the month preceding the sale, because the current month’s index does not exist yet when you sell, and use the price index of the month in which the acquisition, improvement or upgrade actually happened.
Read together with Article 10(a), that means an inherited property is indexed from the month the deceased acquired it. The Department does not say so in a single sentence anywhere we could find, so confirm it with the District Office before you rely on the figure.
Worked example
A flat the deceased bought in March 2005 for €120,000. The deceased died in 2020, when the flat was worth €300,000. The heir sells it in September 2026 for €400,000.
Index values from the Tax Department’s table: March 2005 = 189.51, August 2026 = 267.18. August is used because the sale is in September.
The acquisition value is the deceased’s €120,000, not the €300,000 the flat was worth at death.
- Indexed cost = €120,000 × (267.18 ÷ 189.51) = €169,181.57
- Disposal costs, not indexed: agent’s commission €12,000 + legal fees €2,000 = €14,000
- Gain = €400,000 − €169,181.57 − €14,000 = €216,818.43
- Less the €30,000 general lifetime exemption under Article 5(1) = €186,818.43 taxable
- × 20% = €37,363.69 of tax
What a step up would have been worth. Had the heir taken the €300,000 death value as the base cost, the gain would have been €86,000, the taxable amount €56,000, and the tax €11,200. Inheriting the deceased’s base cost costs this heir €26,163.69.
The lifetime exemptions and the main residence conditions are set out in our capital gains tax guide, and the district office confirms the final figures when it assesses the declaration.
The trap for international families
Cyprus abolishing its inheritance tax removes the Cyprus charge. It does nothing to a claim made by another country.
Plenty of estate tax systems reach assets by where the asset sits, or by the deceased’s nationality, domicile or long term residence, rather than by where the deceased last lived. A Cyprus flat can sit inside a foreign estate tax computation even though Cyprus itself asks for nothing, and moving to Cyprus does not by itself shed a domicile of origin elsewhere.
We have deliberately not set out how any particular foreign regime works, because that is a question for that country’s primary sources and its own advisers, not for a Cyprus guide. Note only the shape of the risk: Cyprus’s double tax treaties are principally about taxes on income and capital, and the double tax relief provision that the 1962 estate duty law contained went with the rest of that law in 2000. If you hold assets in more than one country, the Cyprus answer settles one jurisdiction and only one.
What commonly goes wrong
Assuming no inheritance tax means you can leave the estate to whoever you like. Forced heirship under Cap. 195 is a separate question from tax. With a spouse and children, only a quarter of the net estate is freely disposable, and the exemption that once released people of British origin from that rule was repealed in 2015.
Assuming no inheritance tax means no filing. The section 6 statement is due within six months of the death, it covers assets abroad as well as in Cyprus, and it extends to dependants and to a spouse without taxable income.
Starting the probate application before approaching the Tax Department. Section 7 means the court will not grant probate or letters of administration without the Commissioner’s certificate. Form T.F.701 is the beginning of the process, not a formality at the end of it.
Trying to move money or property first. Section 5(3) binds the bank, the insurer, the company and the Land Registry, not just the family. Without the Commissioner’s written authorisation the transfer simply does not happen, and section 5(1) puts the Republic ahead of most other claims on the assets.
Emptying the safe deposit box. The bank must invite the Commissioner to attend the opening.
Expecting a step up in base cost at death. This is the single most expensive mistake in the guide. The heir takes the deceased’s acquisition value and acquisition date, so a long held property carries decades of gain into the heir’s eventual sale.
Missing the 14 July 1974 election. If the deceased acquired the property before that date, the person disposing of it may elect the 14 July 1974 value. On old family land that election can dwarf every other relief available.
Leaving property to someone outside the statutory heirs without checking the Land Registry cost. A lawful heir registers free. A legatee who is not a lawful heir and not within the third degree pays 3 per 1,000 of the 1 January 2013 value, and a distribution made by an administrator as a gift to a non-heir is charged on the full Chapter 17 scale at current market value.
Applying the wrong law to an old death. The repeal is keyed to the date of death. For a death before 1 January 2000 the 1962 estate duty law still governs, the Tax Department runs a separate procedure for it using forms E.Pr.233 and E.Pr.234, and the Department confirms that old liabilities and outstanding matters for pre-2000 years continue to exist.
Treating a foreign estate tax as somebody else’s problem. The Cyprus answer covers Cyprus.
What we could not verify
We have flagged this guide as not figure verified, for four reasons, and each is worth knowing about.
The euro equivalents of the section 8 penalties. The consolidated text of Law 78(I)/2000 still expresses them in Cyprus pounds. We found no primary document restating them in euro.
A drafting difference in Article 10 of the Capital Gains Tax Law. For gifts, and for several other excluded transfers, the statute says the value is the original value or the adjusted acquisition value, whichever is the lower. Paragraph (a), the death paragraph, omits those words and resolves only by date. We could not verify from a primary source how the Tax Department applies that difference in practice, and on a property with substantial improvement spending it could matter.
The indexation start month for an inherited property. Our reading follows from combining Article 10(a) with the Department’s stated month rules, but the Department does not spell it out for inherited property in one place.
Anything about foreign estate taxes. Out of scope for a Cyprus primary source and deliberately not asserted here.
What we are confident about is the core: the repealing law, its date, its trigger, the section 6 and section 7 obligations, the Land Registry position, and the fact that transfer on death is not a capital gains disposal while the heir inherits the deceased’s base cost.
Where to check
The repeal is a single page. Law 74(I)/2000 is reproduced from Gazette No. 3413 of 16 June 2000, and section 2 is the whole of it. Law 78(I)/2000 sets out everything that replaced estate duty, and the Tax Department’s deceased estates page carries the plain language summary, the current forms and the separate pre-2000 procedure. Article 10(a) of Law 52/1980 governs what the heir carries forward for capital gains, and section 7(1)(a) of Cap. 219 governs the Land Registry.
Our capital gains tax calculator will run the indexation arithmetic once you know the deceased’s acquisition month and cost. Because the answer for an estate turns on the date of death, on who counts as a lawful heir, and on records that may be decades old, have the position confirmed by a firm licensed to advise in Cyprus before you distribute anything.
