I have a tagline. It is not subtle: Mehr Geld. Mehr Freiheit. Weniger Staat. More money. More freedom. Less state.
I left Germany in 2000. I have lived in Switzerland, the UK, the USA, Malta, Ireland, and Scotland. I have spent twenty-five years watching what states do to people’s money, time, and decisions — and watching what happens when a state is designed, by necessity or by intention, to leave more of those things alone.
Malta is not perfect. No place is. But its fiscal architecture — the cumulative effect of its tax rules, its absence of certain taxes, and its structural approach to wealth — reflects something that resonates with a certain kind of person. Let me explain what that is.
The Taxes Malta Does Not Have
The most revealing thing about any tax system is what it chooses not to tax. Malta chooses not to tax:
Capital gains on most assets — no CGT for individuals on the sale of shares, financial instruments, or other investments (property is an exception, with a final withholding tax of 8% on transfer value). For a non-dom, foreign capital gains are never taxed even if remitted.
Inheritance and gifts — Malta has no inheritance tax, no estate duty, no gift tax. Wealth transfers between generations do not trigger a state claim. Your assets pass to your children without the government taking 40% (as HMRC does above the UK nil-rate band).
Wealth — no annual tax on net assets, no wealth tax, no solidarity surcharge. What you have accumulated is yours, year after year, without a running levy on its existence.
Property holding — no annual council tax equivalent, no land value tax, no recurring charge on the ownership of real estate. You pay stamp duty when you buy and nothing thereafter on the holding itself.
Dividends (for non-doms on foreign income) — foreign dividends not remitted to Malta are not taxed. Foreign dividends remitted attract the 15% rate under structured programmes.
What This Adds Up To
A Malta-resident HNWI under the GRP pays:
- 0% on foreign capital gains (ever)
- 0% on foreign income kept abroad
- 15% on foreign income remitted
- 0% inheritance tax
- 0% wealth tax
- 0% annual property tax on holdings
- 18% VAT on consumption (broadly comparable to the UK’s 20% and Ireland’s 23%)
The total tax burden on a wealthy individual who has positioned their income and assets correctly can be legitimately lower than almost anywhere in the EU — not through aggressive avoidance, but through the straightforward application of Maltese law.
This is not a coincidence. Malta, as a small island with no natural resources, has always needed to attract productive people and capital from elsewhere. The fiscal architecture is a policy choice — the same policy choice that the Knights of St John made when they built Valletta as a place that could attract the best of European civilisation, and the same choice that post-independence Malta has made in designing its tax framework to compete for globally mobile individuals.
The Size-of-State Question
Malta’s government spending as a percentage of GDP runs below the EU average. It has to — the tax take at these rates does not support Scandinavian-scale welfare provision, and the Maltese do not particularly want it to.
What this means in practice: public services are functional but not lavish. The healthcare system works; it does not rival a fully-funded NHS at its best. The roads are maintained; they are not motorway-quality. The bureaucracy is present; it is slower than it could be.
For someone coming from a high-tax, high-service Northern European country, the adjustment is real. The services are less comprehensive. The taxes are lower. You buy more of what you need directly rather than receiving it through the state. This is not a problem if you are wealthy enough to buy what you need. It is a problem if you expected Northern European service levels at Mediterranean tax rates.
For the people this works for: High-net-worth individuals and entrepreneurs who want to own their outcomes, pay for their own healthcare and children’s education, and keep the surplus rather than transferring it to a state apparatus to redistribute. People who believe, as a matter of principle, that the productive individual is a better allocator of their own resources than the state.
This is not a political manifesto. It is a description of a fiscal reality and the type of person it suits. Malta’s tax architecture is not designed for someone who wants comprehensive state provision. It is designed for someone who wants to keep what they earn and manage their own affairs.
I left Germany because I believe in that principle. Malta is one of the places in the EU where the state has built its finances around the same idea.
The Freedom Dimension
Less tax is part of it. But there is another dimension that matters to the kind of person who reads this far in an article like this.
Malta is a place where, within the framework of its laws, people are left alone to live their lives. The nanny state instincts that have increasingly characterised Northern European governance — the dietary guidelines, the lifestyle interventions, the compulsory solidarity, the administrative entanglement of every human activity — have not taken root here to the same degree.
This is partly size. A small country does not have the bureaucratic capacity to interfere in everything. It is partly culture — Maltese Catholicism has its own ideas about the proper limits of state authority that are not identical to progressive statism. It is partly the pragmatism of a trading nation that knows it cannot afford to drive productive people away.
Whatever the cause: if you are the kind of person who wants to build your own life, make your own decisions, keep your own money, and leave more of your inheritance to your children than to a government — Malta is one of the EU’s most coherent expressions of that possibility.
That is worth knowing. That is, ultimately, the deepest reason Malta is on our shortlist — and has been for thirteen years.
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