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Methodology & Sources

Figures last verified: 24 July 2026 · Ελληνική έκδοση

1. Who builds Taxemas

Taxemas is built and maintained by Andreas Magirou, the owner and operator of taxemas.com (a private individual based in the Republic of Cyprus). It is not an accounting or audit firm and is not an ICPAC member. It is a free tool that started from one ordinary question — «what actually reaches my account?» — and it is written so the answer can be understood without trusting a black box.

There are no accounts, the amounts you type are not stored, and the calculations run in your browser. Running costs are covered by clearly-labelled sponsorships and by the accountant directory — neither of which moves a single number in the results (see the Terms of Use, §10).

2. Where the numbers come from

Every rate, ceiling and table comes from an official source of the Republic of Cyprus. We do not copy figures from articles or from other calculators; where professional analysis is used (published guides from the large audit firms, for example), it serves as a cross-check on the official source, never as a substitute for it.

• Tax Department (gov.cy) ↗
  Income-tax bands, the 2026 reform deductions, filing obligations and deadlines.
• Tax For All (TFA) portal ↗
  The filing surface our results are meant to prepare you for — we cross-read its published guidance, we never submit anything.
• Social Insurance Services (ΥΚΑ) ↗
  Contribution rates and ceilings, the pension formula, claim-age adjustments and the contribution conditions.
• data.gov.cy — «Πίνακας ασφαλιστέων αποδοχών κατά χρόνο» ↗
  The year-by-year basic insurable earnings and contribution ceilings, 1980–2026. This is the table the pension engine divides by. Published under CC BY 4.0.
• GESY — Health Insurance Organisation ↗
  GESY contribution rates for employees, self-employed and employers, and the €180.000 ceiling.
• Treasury of the Republic — public-sector payroll tables ↗
  The A1–A16 combined salary scales behind the government paths — one published table per year, 2004–2026, each taken verbatim rather than derived from a later one. Via gov.cy and data.gov.cy under CC BY 4.0; the pension page carries the full attribution.

3. How the figures are verified

The rates live in one file per engine — one for tax, one for pensions. When the law changes or a new table is published, that file changes and the whole app updates with it; there are no copies of the same number in ten places waiting to be forgotten.

On top of that, checks compare the code against the official files themselves:

• verify-bie.mjs — Reads the official insurable-earnings table (CSV) and compares every year, 1980–2026, against the divisors and ceilings hard-coded in the pension engine. One mismatched year fails the run.
• verify-scales.mjs — Reads the published public-sector payroll export and rebuilds the A1–A16 scales from it, step by step, so the government paths cannot silently drift from the table they claim to follow.
• verify-units.mjs — Runs 14.560 combinations of salary, mode, salary count and year through the calculator and asserts that the figures you SEE add up: net + tax + social insurance + GESY = gross, to the cent, in both the yearly and the monthly view.
• verify-icons.mjs — Not a tax check — it measures the rendered logo pixel by pixel. Listed here because the same rule applies to everything we ship: if it can be measured, it is measured, not eyeballed.

What cannot be machine-checked — the reading of a newly voted provision, for instance — is checked by hand, against at least two independent published analyses and the text of the law itself.

These checks reduce errors — they do not eliminate them. Transcription, conversion or interpretation mistakes remain possible in every figure and text on this site; in any discrepancy with an official publication or a decision of a competent authority, the official source always prevails. If you find such a discrepancy, tell us (section 9).

4. What the tax engine computes

For tax year 2026 (the reform voted on 22 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026):

• Bands: 0% up to €22.000 · 20% to €32.000 · 25% to €42.000 · 30% to €72.000 · 35% above that. 2025 stays available for comparison, with the old bands and the old ceiling.
• Social insurance: 8,8% for employees, 16,6% for the self-employed, on insurable earnings capped at €68.904 a year.
• GESY: 2,65% for employees, 4% for the self-employed, capped at €180.000.
• Reform deductions: children, rent or mortgage interest (up to €2.000), energy upgrades (up to €1.000) — subject to the family-income tests — and natural-disaster repairs (up to €500, with no income test).
• Article 14 (the “1/5 restriction”): social insurance + GESY + pension/provident contributions + life premiums + approved medical-scheme premiums (up to 2%) are deducted as one basket, capped at one fifth. That fifth and the inner caps — 10% for the fund, 2% for medical — are all measured on taxable income — after business expenses and after the new-resident exemption — as section 14(2) states expressly, and as 14(1)(γ) confirms by counting a business's profit rather than its takings.
• New-resident exemptions: 50% where remuneration exceeds €55.000, or 20% capped at €8.550.
• Employer cost: 8,8% social insurance + 2,9% GESY + 2% Social Cohesion Fund + 1,2% Redundancy Fund + 0,5% HRDA — 15,4% on top of the gross salary, each with its own ceiling.

All amounts are computed in whole cents, and the net is derived by subtracting the already-rounded parts, so what you see always adds up to what you see.

5. What the pension engine computes

The Cyprus state old-age pension is a points scheme: each year's insurable earnings are divided by the basic insurable earnings (€11.480 for 2026) to give insurance points, capped at 6 points a year — because the contribution ceiling is exactly 6 × BIE (€68.904).

• Basic pension: 60% of your average basic points from age 16 to retirement — a full rate of €529,82/month in 2026 — raised to 80/90/100% with 1/2/3 dependants.
• Supplementary pension: 1,5% × total supplementary points × BIE, roughly €13,25 per point per month. Pensions are paid in 13 instalments a year.
• Claim age: −0,5% per month for claiming before 65 (down to −12% at 63) and +0,5% per month for deferring, up to 68.
• Contribution conditions: at least 780 weeks of insurance, at least 15 paid points, and total points ≥30% of the reference years (≥70% for a claim before 65).
• Civil servants: each year is priced from its own published payroll table (2004–2026) rather than from today's table projected backwards, including the reduced entry scale for the first 24 months that applies to appointments from 1/1/2012.

There is no automatic “annual pay rise” assumption, and that is deliberate: the BIE is re-indexed each year to average wage growth, so a raise that merely tracks the economy buys no extra points. You declare raises yourself, where the amounts are nominal. Inflating a salary 3% a year against a frozen BIE would overstate a 40-year pension dramatically.

6. Lump sum and Provident Fund

Government gratuity: gratuity = annual pension × 14/3 (Law 216(I)/2012, art.7). For service to 31.12.2012 the annual pension is the final annual pensionable salary × months ÷ 800 — protected at the retirement salary; for service from 1.1.2013, the average of the pensionable salaries of all months, revalued with the SIS insurance unit, × months ÷ 800. Because the tool prices the scales in today's euros, the revaluation cancels and the result reads in today's prices. Statutory limits, as the Treasury and the ΠΑΣΥΔΥ handbook (2023) apply them: pensionable service counts up to 400 months in total — the pre-2013 part first, the post-2013 part gets what remains; the post-2013 average, however, spans the whole service to retirement. The annual pension cannot exceed ½ of final pensionable emoluments. On retirement before 65 the post-2013 gratuity takes the actuarial reduction of Law 210(I)/2022's Second Schedule — the pre-2013 part never does. Every official worked example uses the flat 14/3 factor. On tax treatment: the taxation of the post-2013 part (art.8, Law 216(I)/2012) was abolished by Law 209(I)/2022 retroactively from 1.1.2021 — for the current regime consult the Treasury, the Tax Department or a licensed professional. Those first appointed after 1.10.2011 accrue from the start of the new occupational scheme (2023, Law 210(I)/2022) — never retroactively; their 2011–2022 years built a state provident-fund balance paid out separately. For past years with no detailed payroll data, the average uses the available years — the law's own rule for missing records.

Provident Fund: a defined-contribution account over the same salary path as the pension — each future year contributes (your % + your employer's %) × salary, credited at year end (a conservative convention); gap years contribute nothing but the balance stays invested. The three return scenarios are documented historical figures, not forecasts: Conservative +2% (the deposit-heavy profile — Cypriot funds hold ~14% in cash/deposits, Central Bank's first statistical report, 2025), Moderate +4% (the midpoint), Balanced +5.5% (the longest published Cypriot balanced series, 1989–2024). The result is also shown in today's purchasing power, deflated 2%/yr (the ECB target). Returns are not guaranteed and past returns do not predict future ones — in 2013 bank employees' provident funds suffered severe losses in the bail-in. Nothing here constitutes investment advice.

7. What we don't model

These are deliberate simplifications. If one of them applies to you, the result will differ — sometimes materially:

• Occupation-based minimum insurable amounts for the self-employed (the engine works from the income you declare, not from your category's notional figure).
• Foreign income, double-tax treaties, and the finer points of residence and domicile.
• Credited insurance periods (studies, military service, unemployment, parental leave) and careers aggregated across EU member states (Reg. 883/2004).
• The monthly pension of the government occupational scheme and its offset against the Social Insurance pension — the “Lump sum & Provident Fund” card computes the gratuity, not the scheme's monthly amount. Also: management fees, actual asset allocations, and vesting/transfer terms of Provident Funds.
• The special tax regimes for foreign and widow's pensions.
• The 2027 pension reform — its parameters land here when the law passes, not while it is being debated.
• The exact day: the date fields accept a month (e.g. 6/2016) and the first and last years count pro-rata, but the day is ignored — anywhere inside the same month the result is identical.
• The austerity years 2012–2016 for public-sector careers: actual pay was cut below the 2011 scale (cuts later ruled unconstitutional and refunded), so a career crossing them is an approximation.

8. When the figures are updated

There are three main cycles: January (tax rates, BIE, pension indexation), the publication of a new public-sector payroll table, and any time an amendment is voted. The “figures last verified” line shown here and on the FAQ pages records our most recent check — it is not a guarantee of correctness.

9. Found a mistake?

Write to info@taxemas.com with the amount you expected, the amount Taxemas showed, and the inputs you used. Corrections to a rate or a formula are handled first — a wrong number in a tool people use to make financial decisions is not a small thing.

Guidance, not tax advice. See also the Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · FAQ · Μεθοδολογία (Ελληνικά)