Maltese Finance Minister, Edward Scicluna announced that the measure announced in the last Budget (that of November 2013) of reducing the tax charged on revenue from rented residential properties from a maximum of 35% to 15%, was being implemented and backdated to January 1 of 2014.
This measure is aimed at reducing tax evasion by encouraging landlords to declare the income they made form rented properties. This would also encourage more people to rent vacant dwellings, the tax would be collected as a withholding tax.
If the only source of income is the rental income, one may opt to not pay the fixed 15% tax but the ‘ordinary’ staggered rate of income tax in Malta.