Capital gains tax in Cyprus

Exceptions to the duty to pay CGT include, among others:

• transfer on death,
• gifts between spouses, parents, children and relatives up to the third degree of kindred,
• gifts from a parent to a child placed with them under Part III of the Children Law,
• gifts to the Republic, and gifts for charitable purposes, such as education and culture, to a local authority or to a charity in Cyprus approved by the Council of Ministers,
• land, or land with buildings, bought (or contracted to be bought) from 16 July 2015 to 31 December 2016 at market value from a person not connected to the buyer, whenever it is later sold, gifted or otherwise disposed of. Property received by exchange or gift, or acquired in a sale under Part VI or VIA of the Immovable Property (Transfer and Mortgage) Law, does not qualify,
• the disposal of a main home for proceeds of no more than €450,000 in a loan restructuring, a bankruptcy or personal insolvency procedure, a company winding-up or examinership, or a mortgagee sale, made by 31 December 2030 (see below).

Main home sold in a loan restructuring or insolvency

No tax is paid on the gain from disposing of a main home that the owner uses exclusively as their own residence, if the proceeds are no more than €450,000 and the disposal is made by 31 December 2030 in one of these ways:

• a loan restructuring: the borrower or guarantor transfers the home, or their rights under a sale contract deposited at the Land Registry, to the lender (a licensed bank or a credit-acquiring company, among others) or to a person not connected to them, to reduce or repay that lender's loans that were non-performing on or before 31 December 2020,
• a composition or arrangement approved by the court, or by the Official Receiver or a trustee acting under a bankruptcy order,
• a personal repayment plan in force under the Insolvency of Natural Persons Law of 2015,
• a company winding-up order, or an examiner appointed by the court under the Companies Law,
• a sale of the mortgaged home under Part VIA of the Immovable Property (Transfer and Mortgage) Law.

Proceeds above €450,000 lose this exemption in full. The cap was €350,000 before the 2026 amendment.

A home owned by a company counts as the shareholder's home when it is the shareholder's main residence, used by the shareholder exclusively as their own residence.

When the exempted tax becomes payable

If part of the proceeds or of the property is returned to the owner or the debtor, or distributed to the company's shareholders, the exempted tax becomes payable up to the amount or value returned or distributed, in most cases from the date of that return or distribution.

The full tax becomes payable from the date of the disposal if the court annuls a composition or arrangement because the court's approval of it was obtained by fraud, or annuls the debtor's bankruptcy because, in the court's view, the debtor should not have been declared bankrupt. The same applies if a debtor under a repayment plan is guilty of an offence under the 2015 insolvency law.

Individuals receive lifetime allowances to reduce the taxable gain. They cannot add the main home allowance to the general one: the total used over a lifetime cannot exceed €150,000. The amounts rose on 1 January 2026, and a person who used part or all of the lower amounts before that date can claim the difference on disposals made from that date:

• A lifetime allowance is €30,000 on the taxable gain from the sale of any property.
• A lifetime allowance is €150,000 on the taxable gain from selling a primary residence. The owner must have used the home only as their own residence for a total of at least five years, or ten years from their second disposal of a home (a sale, for example) onwards.
• No main home allowance is given if the home is sold a year or more after the owner stopped living in it. On a plot above 1.5 decares, the gain from the extra land is taxed.
• An allowance is €50,000 on the gain from agricultural land sold by an individual whose main occupation is farming.