Registering as self-employed in Malta

The shape of it

Becoming self-employed in Malta is three registrations and a habit. You declare the self-occupied status itself, you come onto the income tax self-assessment system, and you register for VAT under one of two articles. The habit is the part nobody registers you for: setting aside tax from the first payment, because from now on nothing is withheld before money reaches you.

This page walks the steps in order, and then the part that actually determines how the first year feels: what each registration starts costing, and when.

Step 1: declare the activity

Registration of the self-occupied activity runs through Jobsplus, Malta's employment agency, which records your engagement as self-occupied. If you are keeping a full-time job and freelancing on the side, the activity is registered as part-time self-employment, which is also one of the conditions for the TA22 flat rate later.

Step 2: income tax, the self-assessment way

As a self-occupied person you are on self-assessment with the Malta Tax and Customs Administration: nobody deducts tax before you are paid, you compute your own position, and you settle it on fixed dates. Profit is taxed through the progressive bands, and from your second year onward, provisional tax spreads the bill across three instalments benchmarked on your last self-assessment.

In year one there is usually no instalment schedule yet, which feels like a tax holiday and is not: the first return, due the following 30 June on paper or 31 July online, settles the whole first year at once. The calculator shows what to set aside from each payment so that day is boring.

Step 3: VAT, and the Article 10 or 11 choice

VAT registration comes with a real decision. Under Article 11, available while your calendar-year turnover stays under €35,000, you charge no VAT and file a single annual declaration, but you cannot reclaim the VAT on what you buy. Under Article 10 you charge 18%, file quarterly, and reclaim input VAT.

Article 11 is the default instinct for most freelancers starting small, and usually right. But if your clients are VAT-registered businesses, the 18% you would charge costs them nothing and the input VAT you would reclaim is real money, so a deliberate Article 10 registration below the threshold can pay. Either way the €35,000 line is measured by supply date across the calendar year, and crossing it starts a 15-day clock to apply for Article 10. The threshold guide covers the mechanics.

What starts costing, from day one

Class 2 social security starts immediately, at the SA weekly minimum of €36.18 in your first calendar year, because there is no prior-year profit to compute 15% from. From year two it becomes 15% of your previous year's net profit, clamped between the weekly floor and ceiling, due in three instalments a year. The exception: if you stay employed full-time and freelance on the side, your Class 1 contributions already cover you and no Class 2 is due on the side activity.

Income tax accrues from your first invoice even though it is collected later, and if your side work qualifies, the TA22 10% flat rate may beat the bands on up to €12,000 of net part-time profit.

Week one, done properly

Three things repay themselves many times over if they exist from the start: books that record every euro in and out with the receipts kept, invoices that meet Malta's invoice requirements with an unbroken number sequence, and the deadline calendar somewhere it will actually be seen. That is also, not coincidentally, the shape of what Settlano does automatically.

Common questions