Starting a Business in Malta 2026: Steps, Costs & Timeline

Starting a business in Malta means choosing between two very different amounts of paperwork. Registering as self-employed takes a few days and costs nothing. Incorporating a private limited company takes two to three weeks, €100 in registry fees, €232.94 of paid-up share capital and €1,500 to €4,000 in professional fees, and then the bank account takes months. I run a Maltese Ltd from St Julian's, and this is the route map I wish I had been given before I started, including the parts the people selling company formations leave out.

	Self-employed (sole trader)	Private limited company (Ltd)
Where you register	Jobsplus + MTCA (tax and VAT)	Malta Business Registry, then MTCA for VAT
Set-up cost	€0 in fees	€100 registry fee (electronic) + €232.94 paid-up capital + €1,500-4,000 professional fees
Time to legally trade	Days	2-3 weeks to the certificate
Bank account	Your personal account, or a sole-trader EMI	EMI in days, Maltese bank in months
Annual fixed costs	A few hundred euros for a tax return	€3,000-6,000+ (accounting, registered office, annual return, audit or review)
Tax on profit	Personal rates, up to 35%	35%, about 5% effective after the shareholder refund
Social security	Class 2: 15% of last year's net income	Class 1 on any salary you pay yourself; none on dividends
Liability	Personal and unlimited	Limited to the company
Makes sense from	Day one	Roughly €40,000-70,000 of annual profit

That table is the decision. Everything below is how each route works in practice, what it costs across the first year, and where the delays come from.

Can a foreigner start a business in Malta?

Yes, and for most readers of this site it is easier than they fear. There is no nationality condition on owning a Maltese company: a foreigner can hold 100% of the shares, sit as the only director and act as company secretary too, and Maltese law does not require any of those people to live in Malta. The company itself, in other words, is open to anyone.

Working in that business is a separate question, and it splits on your passport.

If you are an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen, you can live and work here by right. You register your residence with Identità (my guide to getting your Maltese residence card covers the sequence), you get a Maltese tax number, and from there you can be self-employed or a salaried director of your own company like any local. Nobody asks for a business permit.

If you are a non-EU national, owning the company is still fine, but drawing a salary from it or trading as self-employed in Malta needs an employment licence. For self-employment, Jobsplus grants that licence only if you meet one of three tests: a capital investment of at least €500,000 in Malta within six months, a project approved by Malta Enterprise, or a highly skilled profile with a plan to employ at least three Maltese or EU nationals within 18 months. Those conditions rule out the typical one-person consultancy, which is why most non-EU founders I meet either come in as an employee of a Maltese company under the single permit, or keep their clients abroad on the Nomad Residence Permit and leave the Maltese company for later. Americans have their own set of wrinkles, covered in the moving to Malta from the USA guide.

Self-employed or company in Malta? The paperwork answer

The corporate tax guide answers this question with tax maths: below about €40,000 of profit stay self-employed, above about €70,000 incorporate. What that page does not spell out is how different the two routes feel administratively, and for a lot of people the admin decides it before the tax does.

Registering as self-employed

The sole-trader route is close to frictionless. You register your self-employed activity with Jobsplus, you tell the MTCA (the tax authority, formerly the CFR) that you have started an economic activity, and you register for VAT. If you already live here, you already have a tax number and an eID, so most of this is done online in an afternoon. There is no share capital, no registry, no memorandum and articles, no audit, and no annual return.

Your ongoing obligations are a personal tax return with the business income on it, VAT returns if you registered under Article 10, and Class 2 social security contributions. Those are the one cost people forget to budget: 15% of the previous year's net income from the business, paid in three instalments in April, August and December, with a minimum weekly rate in the low thirties of euros and a cap of €83.89 a week in 2026 according to the rates published by Papilio Services. On a first year with no prior income, expect to pay at or near the minimum.

Your profit is then taxed at Malta's personal rates, up to 35%, which you can model with the Malta tax calculator. Liability is personal and unlimited, which matters more for a builder than for a software consultant.

Registering a company

The company route has more steps, each with a fee attached, and it is worth doing for two reasons that are not purely fiscal. First, limited liability: your flat is not on the line if a client sues. Second, control over timing: a company can keep profits inside at the 5% effective rate and pay you dividends in the years you choose, which a sole trader cannot do. The price is a fixed annual overhead that does not care whether you earned €20,000 or €200,000, plus the discipline of being a director. The rest of this guide is that route.

How to register a company in Malta, step by step

Step 1: Find someone to file for you

Since 1 March 2025 every incorporation is filed electronically through the Malta Business Registry's BAROS portal, and filing requires an authorised user account with a digital certificate. In practice that means a corporate service provider (CSP) or an accountancy firm does the filing. I used CSB Group, one of the large established providers. They were competent and thorough, and their invoices reflect the brand. A boutique accountant will do the same choreography for less, and if I were starting again on a small service company, that is where I would look first. What you are buying at this step is the person who will also be your registered office, your company secretary if you want one, and the filer of your annual return, so choose someone you can stand emailing for years.

Step 2: The due-diligence pack

Before anyone drafts a document, the CSP will KYC you, because their regulator is strict with them and they pass that on. Expect to supply a certified passport copy, proof of address less than three months old, a bank reference letter, a CV, a description of the business and its expected clients and turnover, and the source of the money you are putting in. If the shares will be held by another company (a holding structure), add its own certificate, register of directors and beneficial-owner information. This pack is the part of the process you control, and it is where the two-to-three-week timeline is won or lost. Assemble it before you instruct anyone.

Step 3: Name and structure

You can check name availability with the MBR and reserve a name for three months. Then the structural decisions, most of which have a cheap default for a one-person company:

• Directors: at least one, and for a private exempt company (which a single-member company is) the director must be an individual, not another company. No residency requirement in law.
• Company secretary: mandatory. Normally the sole director cannot also be the secretary, but a private exempt company is the exception, so a one-person Ltd can have one person doing both. Many founders let the CSP hold the role for a few hundred euros a year instead.
• Registered office: must be a Maltese address. Your CSP will provide one for €300 to €1,500 a year; a home address works too if your lease allows it.
• Share capital: the minimum authorised capital for a private company is €1,164.69, of which 20% must be paid up, so €232.94 is all that changes hands. Most CSPs round this to €1,200 authorised and €240 paid. Ask how the deposit is handled, because you cannot open a company account for a company that does not exist yet; providers typically run it through their own client account and evidence it to the registry.

Step 4: Memorandum, beneficial owners, filing

The CSP drafts the memorandum and articles of association (the company's constitution: name, registered office, objects, capital, directors, secretary), collects the beneficial-ownership declaration that Malta requires at incorporation for anyone holding more than 25%, and files the lot with proof of the capital deposit. The registry fee at minimum capital is €100 for electronic filing, per the MBR fee structure, rising on a sliding scale to €1,900 for very large authorised capital. Once the file is complete, the certificate of registration typically comes back in two to three working days, and that certificate is what every bank, supplier and portal will ask you for from then on.

Step 5: The registrations that happen after the certificate

This is where new founders get lost, because some of it is automatic and some of it is not.

• Income tax number: automatic. When the MBR registers the company, the MTCA generates a nine-digit tax number for it, as the MTCA's company registration page sets out. You do not apply for it, though you may not be told it has happened.
• VAT number: not automatic, and needed before you trade. Under €35,000 of annual turnover you can register under Article 11 as a small undertaking: you get a VAT number, charge no VAT and reclaim none. Above that, or if you invoice business clients in other EU countries, you register under Article 10, charge 18% on Maltese sales and file quarterly returns, which is what almost every international service company does from day one. The CSB Group VAT page lists the current thresholds.
• PE number: only if the company will have employees, and a salaried director counts. This is the employer registration with the MTCA that lets you run payroll and file the monthly FS5. If you only ever pay yourself dividends, you can skip it, and skipping it means no Class 1 social security either.
• Jobsplus: once you have a PE number you create the company's employer profile and submit an engagement form for every person you hire, yourself included if you take a salary. Directors paid an honorarium rather than a salary are exempt, per the Jobsplus employer knowledge base.
• Shareholder registration for the refund: if you intend to claim the 6/7ths refund, the shareholder needs to be registered with the MTCA for it. Your accountant will do this; just make sure it is on their list.

Step 6: The bank account, which is the real bottleneck

Every other step in this guide is measured in days. The bank is measured in months, and it is the reason the "operational within two weeks" pitch is misleading. In 2026, HSBC Malta is not taking new business accounts while its sale goes through, and Bank of Valletta wants a personal relationship first, an ownership chart, projections or accounts, and two to four weeks that stretch to three months for anything foreign-owned. My own experience was worse: the bank I applied to rejected the business account outright, which is how I ended up on Wamo, which opened almost on the spot, and later Revolut Business alongside it.

The playbook that works is to open an EMI the week the certificate arrives, invoice from it, and only chase a traditional bank if you need lending or cash deposits. I have written that up in full, with the documents each provider asks for, in the Malta business bank account and EMI guide. Do not let a Maltese branch sit on your critical path.

How long does it take to register a company in Malta?

Putting the steps on a calendar, for a straightforward single-shareholder company with a clean file:

Stage	Realistic duration	What slows it down
Due-diligence pack	3-5 working days	Waiting on a bank reference letter from your home bank
Name check and reservation	1-2 days	A name too close to an existing one
Memorandum and articles	2-3 days	Unusual objects or a multi-layer holding structure
MBR processing	2-3 working days	Missing capital evidence or an incomplete BO form
Certificate of registration	2-3 weeks from instruction
VAT and PE numbers	Days to a few weeks	Article 10 applications with an EU angle get more questions
EMI business account	Hours to a week	A brand-new company with no website or invoice to show
Traditional Maltese bank	2-3 months or more, sometimes never	Being small, new and foreign-owned

So: legally existing in two to three weeks, invoicing within a month via an EMI, and a traditional bank whenever it gets round to you. If you are migrating an existing business, keep the old entity invoicing until the new one can actually receive money.

How much does it cost to start a business in Malta? The first-year budget

Formation quotes tend to show you the incorporation fee and stop there. Here is what the first twelve months of a lean, one-person service company cost in practice, using the ranges Sebastian Sauerborn's step-by-step and my own invoices agree on.

Item	Typical 2026 cost	Notes
MBR registration fee	€100	Electronic filing at minimum authorised capital; €245 on paper
Paid-up share capital	€232.94	Your money, sitting in the company; not a fee
CSP incorporation package	€1,500-4,000	Some providers advertise around €1,000 all-in; check what "all-in" excludes
Registered office	€300-1,500 a year	Free if you can use your own address
Company secretary (if outsourced)	A few hundred euros a year	Optional for a private exempt company
Accounting and tax compliance	€2,000-4,000+ a year	Bookkeeping, tax return, refund claim. I keep this down by doing the routine myself: see how I run my company's accounting
Audit or review engagement	€3,000-8,000 for a full audit	Since December 2025, small companies can opt for a review engagement 30-50% cheaper, but refund claims still need audited accounts in practice
MBR annual return	About €100	A little less filed electronically; due within 42 days of the incorporation anniversary
Business account	~€100 one-off, ~€40 a month	Wamo's opening fee (waived on the annual plan) and its Grow plan
Payroll software, if you pay yourself a salary	~€2 per employee a month	Buddy; the traditional alternative was around €70 per employee a month

A realistic first-year total for a small service company lands between €5,000 and €10,000, before you have paid a cent of tax. Compare that with the self-employed route, where the equivalent number is whatever an accountant charges you for one tax return. That gap is the fixed cost that the 5% rate has to pay for, and it is why the break-even sits where the corporate tax guide puts it rather than at zero.

What the corporate service providers do not tell you

The people who form companies for a living are competent, and they are also salespeople. Six things I had to learn on my own.

The 35% leaves your account first. Malta's 5% is an effective rate: the company pays 35% on profits, distributes a dividend, and the shareholder claims 6/7ths of the tax back afterwards. The refund arrives months after you paid, so in year one you fund the full 35% out of cash flow. The corporate tax guide walks through the timing and the fiscal-unit alternative that avoids the wait.

Substance is not optional. A Maltese certificate does not make a company Maltese for tax. If you run it from a laptop in Berlin, Germany will argue it is German, and the 5% evaporates. Living here, holding board meetings here and keeping the books here is what makes the structure hold, which is why this site spends so many words on residence and personal tax alongside the company pages.

Paying yourself a salary switches on payroll. A salaried director needs a PE number, monthly FS5 filings and Class 1 social security, which in 2026 runs at 10% from the company and 10% from you, each capped at about €56 a week. Dividends carry no social security at all. Most owner-directors here take a modest salary for the contribution record and healthcare entitlement and leave the rest as dividends, but it is a choice to make with the accountant, not a default.

The audit did not really go away. The 2025 rules let small companies replace the statutory audit with a lighter review, and that is a genuine saving. But a company claiming the shareholder refund still needs audited accounts to support the claim, so a refund-system company usually keeps the audit line in the budget.

"Bank account included" means an introduction. No provider can open a BOV account for you; they can email BOV. What they can do is get you onto an EMI, which you can do yourself in an hour.

Your time is the largest line item. Directors sign things, answer compliance questionnaires, chase documents and sit in bank branches. In the first year, I would guess the admin ate a full working week, spread across dozens of small interruptions. For a self-employed consultant billing by the day, that has a price.

Do I need a local director?

No. The Companies Act does not require a director or a company secretary to be resident in Malta, and there is no local-partner rule of the kind some countries impose. The question behind the question is about tax residence, and the answer there is stricter: a company is treated as resident where it is managed and controlled, so a foreign-based sole director running everything from abroad puts the Maltese status at risk. Providers sell "resident director" services for mid four-figure to five-figure annual fees to paper over that gap. If you live here, you are the resident director and the fee is zero, which is one more reason the structure works best for people who have genuinely moved.

So which route should you pick?

If you are a freelancer or consultant arriving with a client or two and profit under about €40,000, register as self-employed the week you have your residence card, open a business account at an EMI so your invoices and your rent do not share a statement, and revisit the question in a year with real numbers. You lose nothing by starting small; the company can be formed later and the client contracts moved across.

If you are bringing an established business with profit comfortably above €70,000, or you need limited liability, or you plan to hire, form the company and do it in this order: assemble the due-diligence pack first, instruct a CSP or accountant whose annual fees you have seen in writing, open an EMI the day the certificate lands, and treat the traditional bank as a background project. Register for VAT before the first invoice, decide with your accountant whether you will draw a salary, and put the 35% cash-flow gap in the first-year budget.

If you are a non-EU national, sort the permit before the company. A Maltese Ltd is easy to own and hard to work in without the right licence, and the licence is the part that takes planning.

Whatever you choose, the tax mechanics are in the corporate tax guide, the running of the books in the company accounting guide, and the banking in the business account and EMI guide. Those three pages plus this one are the whole business section, and they are the order I would read them in.