Cyprus does not tax inheritances. Estate duty was abolished for deaths on or after 1 January 2000 by Law 74(I)/2000, which repealed the Estate Tax Law of 1962, and nothing has replaced it: no inheritance tax, no estate tax, no gift tax, no wealth tax. What Cyprus does have is a rule limiting who you may leave your estate to, a six-month filing deadline that catches families out, and, for most British owners, a UK inheritance tax bill that the Cypriot zero rate does nothing to soften.
The tax really is gone
Twenty-six years on, estate duty has not crept back in any form. The tax reform package that came into force on 1 January 2026, the largest overhaul of Cypriot taxation in two decades, changed corporate rates, income tax bands and capital gains allowances, and left the succession position exactly where it was. An estate worth €200,000 and an estate worth €20 million attract the same amount of Cypriot tax on death, which is nothing.
That applies to the whole estate, not just property: bank balances, company shares, cars, the lot. It also applies regardless of who inherits. There is no distinction here between a spouse, a nephew and a stranger, because there is no rate to distinguish between.
The filing that outlived the tax
The paperwork survived the abolition. Under the Deceased Persons Estate Law, the executor or administrator must submit a statement of the deceased's assets and liabilities to the Tax Department within six months of the date of death. Nothing is charged on the back of it, but nothing else moves until it is done, because the Land Registry will not transfer property into the heirs' names without a tax clearance certificate (form N313) and a form from the Tax Commissioner.
Families who assume "no tax means no forms" tend to discover this a year later, when they try to sell the house and find the title still in a dead relative's name.
Registering the property costs very little
The Department of Lands and Surveys publishes its charges for a transfer by succession, and they bear no relation to what a buyer pays. Acceptance of the application costs €10 per property. The title deed costs €5 per property. Where a will gives rights to someone who is not a legal heir, up to the third degree of relation, the charge is the property's 2013 estimated value divided by 10,000, which on a €300,000 valuation comes to €30.
Set that against an ordinary purchase, where transfer fees run on a scale reaching 8% of value before reductions. Our transfer fee calculator covers the buying side. Inheriting is, in fee terms, the cheap way to acquire Cypriot property.
The Department will want a death and heir certificate from the community or municipal officer, clearance certificates for municipal, sewerage and water charges, the tax forms above, and ID copies. Where the court has issued a management order, that and the administrator's statement go in too.
Capital gains tax arrives later, not on death
A transfer arising on death is not a disposal for capital gains purposes, so heirs pay nothing when the property comes to them. The 20% rate under the Capital Gains Tax Law, L.52/1980 bites when they sell.
The trap is the base cost. The heir does not get a fresh valuation at the date of death; the acquisition cost carries over from the deceased, or from the Land Registry's 1 January 1980 general valuation where the property was bought before then. A village house that came into the family for a few thousand pounds in the 1970s can therefore produce a very large taxable gain in the hands of a grandchild who never paid a cent for it.
Lifetime exemptions were raised from 1 January 2026 and take some of the sting out: €150,000 for a private principal residence occupied for at least five consecutive years on land of up to 1.5 decares, €50,000 for agricultural land disposed of by a farmer, and €30,000 for any other disposal, with a €150,000 ceiling across a lifetime. Run the numbers on the capital gains tax calculator before you agree a sale price, and keep every purchase document the deceased left behind. Without them the Tax Department works from its own figures.
Cyprus taxes your choice of heir instead
The absence of a rate does not mean a free hand. Section 41 of the Wills and Succession Law, Cap. 195 splits an estate into a statutory portion, which is reserved for close family, and a disposable portion, which is all a will can actually give away.
Leave a spouse and a child, or descendants of a child, and only a quarter of the net estate is disposable. Leave a spouse and one or both parents, with no children, and it rises to a half. Where no spouse, child, descendant or parent survives, the whole estate is yours to dispose of. Write a will leaving everything to a partner you never married while a child is living, and three quarters of it goes to the child anyway.
British owners used to be outside this. Section 42 of Cap. 195 gave full testamentary freedom to anyone whose father was born in the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth country, and Law 96(I)/2015 repealed it with effect from 3 July 2015. Estates of people who died before that date keep the old treatment; everyone else is inside the statutory portion rules, including holders of wills drafted years earlier in reliance on section 42.
The route out is Article 22 of the EU Succession Regulation 650/2012, which lets you choose the law of your nationality to govern the whole of your estate. It has to be said expressly in the will. Say nothing and the law of your habitual residence at death applies, which after a decade in Limassol will be Cypriot law. The mechanics are set out in our wills and inheritance guide.
The bill most British families actually get
Cyprus charges nothing. HMRC charges 40% above the nil rate band of £325,000, rising to £500,000 where a home passes to children or grandchildren, with transfers between spouses exempt and unused bands transferable to the survivor.
Whether your Cypriot assets fall inside that depends on a test that changed on 6 April 2025, when long-term residence replaced domicile for inheritance tax. You are a long-term UK resident if you were UK tax resident for the previous ten consecutive years, or for ten years in any twenty. Meet it and your worldwide estate is chargeable, Paphos flat included. Leaving does not switch it off at once: the tail runs three years for someone with ten to thirteen years of UK residence, four years at fourteen, five at fifteen, and stretches to ten years for the longest-resident. UK-situated assets stay chargeable whatever your status.
There is no double tax relief to claim, because there is no Cypriot tax to set against the UK one. A retired couple in Larnaca with a Cypriot house, a UK buy-to-let and eleven years of recent UK residence behind them are, for inheritance tax purposes, taxed exactly as if they had never left. Our guide to retiring to Cyprus covers how that interacts with the 5% pension rate and residency permits.
What to do about it
- 1Make a Cyprus will covering Cypriot assets, with the Article 22 election written into it, and coordinate it with the UK will so neither revokes the other.
- 2Check whether the long-term residence test catches you, and when the tail runs out. That date, not the move itself, is when UK exposure on non-UK assets ends.
- 3Diary the six-month statement to the Tax Department the week someone dies. It is a formality until it is late.
- 4Keep the deceased's title deeds, contracts and purchase receipts. They are the evidence for the capital gains base cost whenever the property is eventually sold.
Sorting out a Cyprus estate? Browse the directory for a wills and probate lawyer to handle the grant and the succession election, and a tax adviser if UK inheritance tax is still in play. Figures here reflect the rules in force in July 2026; confirm the current position before you act on them.