Malta tax guide
Check any Malta tax calculator, including this one
Most Maltese tax calculators simplify something, and the simplifications are reasonable until the figure they change is yours. Here are three checks you can run in about a minute. Run them on ours too. That's why they're published.
Check one: does it know the Class 2 floor and ceiling?
This is the one that costs real money, and it's the easiest to test. Class 2 social security is 15% of your net profit, but it's held between a weekly minimum and a weekly maximum. A calculator that just takes 15% is right in the middle and wrong at both ends.
Put your profit in and see the size of the gap.
- A flat 15% of profit
- not yet
- What Class 2 actually is
- not yet
- The gap
- not yet
Enter a profit to see the difference.
The real figure is computed by the Settlano engine on the current rates. The flat 15% is the shortcut, shown so you can see what it costs.
The two only agree between roughly €12,543 and €29,081 of profit. Below the first figure the weekly minimum applies whatever you earned, so a flat 15% understates what you owe. Above the second the weekly maximum caps it, so a flat 15% overstates, and the gap keeps widening: at €90,000 of profit it's out by more than €9,000.
Check two: does it say which year, and when it was checked?
Malta's income tax bands moved for 2025 and again for 2026. A calculator with no tax year on it can't be checked against anything, and one that names a year without a date doesn't tell you whether anyone has looked since.
Both are easy to verify. Look for a year, look for a date, and look for a link to the rule rather than a claim about it. Our pages carry all three, which is the only reason we're comfortable asking you to check.
Check three: does it know turnover from profit?
These are different numbers and they answer different questions. Income tax and Class 2 are charged on your net profit, after the costs you incurred wholly and exclusively to earn the income. The VAT registration threshold counts turnover, before any costs at all, by supply date.
A calculator that asks for one figure and uses it for both will put you on the wrong side of the VAT line, in one direction or the other. If the input just says "income", find out which one it means before you trust the answer.
What we do about it here
Every figure on this site is computed by the tax engine inside the Settlano app, compiled to run in your browser. There's no second implementation on the website to drift away from the product, and no rate typed into a web page by hand.
The rates live in one configuration file, each rule carrying the provision it comes from, and every page prints the tax year and the date those rules were last verified. When the rules change, one file changes and everything that reads it follows.
None of that makes us right. It makes us checkable, and that's the part you can verify before you trust anything.
Common questions
Is a Malta tax calculator that uses 15% for Class 2 wrong?
Only outside a narrow window. Class 2 is 15% of net profit, but it's held between a weekly floor and a weekly ceiling, so a flat 15% is right only between about 12,543 and 29,081 euro of profit. Below that it understates the charge, because the floor applies whatever you earned. Above it, it overstates, and the gap keeps growing: at 90,000 euro of profit a flat 15% is out by more than 9,000 euro.
Why do calculators leave the floor and ceiling out?
Because 15% of profit is one line of arithmetic and the clamp is three, and because the window where they agree covers a lot of ordinary freelance incomes. It's a reasonable simplification right up until it's your figure, which is exactly when you need it to be right.
What should a calculator tell me about its own rates?
Which tax year it is computing, and when those rates were last checked. Malta's bands moved for 2025 and again for 2026, so a page with no year on it can't be checked at all, and a page that names a year without a date doesn't tell you whether anyone has looked since.
Does this apply to Settlano's own calculator?
Yes, and that's the point of publishing the tests. Run all three on our calculator. It computes with the same engine as the app, it shows the tax year and the date the rates were verified, and it starts from net profit rather than turnover, which is why it says so on the input.
Settlano works your set-aside out every time you log a job, so the question stops coming up.
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