Many workers no longer pay income tax because of tax bracket changes.
Verified. The 2025 Budget materially widened tax-free thresholds: single €9,100→€12,000 (+€2,900), married €12,700→€15,000 (+€2,300), parent €10,500→€13,000 (+€2,500). Under the 2026 Budget, four new family rate categories phase in further widening through 2028. The Malta Tax & Customs Administration confirms 2025 saw 'tax cuts: relief across all income brackets', and Caruana announced 68,000 parents alone benefiting from the 2026 family-rate restructuring (€160M over 3 years). Tens of thousands of workers have been moved out of income tax altogether.
Verified. The 2025 Budget materially widened tax-free thresholds: single €9,100→€12,000 (+€2,900), married €12,700→€15,000 (+€2,300), parent €10,500→€13,000 (+€2,500). Under the 2026 Budget, four new family rate categories phase in further widening through 2028. The Malta Tax & Customs Administration confirms 2025 saw 'tax cuts: relief across all income brackets', and Caruana announced 68,000 parents alone benefiting from the 2026 family-rate restructuring (€160M over 3 years). Tens of thousands of workers have been moved out of income tax altogether.
We tested Abela's claim against Malta Tax & Customs Administration published rate tables for 2024-2026, Caruana's Budget 2025 and Budget 2026 speeches, ACT Malta professional commentary, and Maltese press coverage. The methodological question is whether the documented widening of tax-free thresholds and the 2026 family-rate restructuring lift enough workers out of income tax to support a 'many' framing.
Verdict lands at True because Budget 2025 widened single, married and parent tax-free thresholds by 18-32%, Budget 2026 added four new family-rate categories phasing further widening through 2028, and Caruana confirmed 68,000 parents alone benefit from the family-rate restructure — putting the order of magnitude of workers moved out of income tax firmly in the tens of thousands. The deep-dive lays out the threshold changes, the family-rate categories, and the cohort scope; this editorial note is methodology only.
Do many workers really no longer pay income tax because of the band changes
Successive Budgets across this legislature have materially widened the lower tax bands — first in 2025, then in deeper structural form from 2026. The cumulative effect is exactly what Abela describes: tens of thousands of workers fall below the threshold and pay no income tax at all.
The 2025 Budget threshold widening
Effective 1 January 2025, the Maltese Tax & Customs Administration confirmed:
| Computation | Pre-2025 tax-free band | 2025 tax-free band | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single | €9,100 | €12,000 | +€2,900 (+32%) |
| Married | €12,700 | €15,000 | +€2,300 (+18%) |
| Parent | €10,500 | €13,000 | +€2,500 (+24%) |
The 15% bracket also widened in parallel: single €14,500→€16,000, married €21,200→€23,000, parent €15,800→€17,500. Average household saving of roughly €500 per Caruana's Budget 2025 framing.
The 2026 Budget structural restructure
Budget 2026 introduced four new family rate categories — married-with-one-child, married-with-2+-children, parent-with-one-child, parent-with-2+-children — phasing further band-widening over 2026, 2027 and 2028. Caruana's 27 October 2025 Budget speech announced 68,000 parents benefiting from the restructure, costing €160 million over 3 years, with an average tax saving of roughly €2,400 per parent — about 5× the 2025 saving.
By 2028, parents on parent-with-2+-children computation earning €30,000 each pay no income tax at all (covered separately as #147). Parents on parent-with-one-child earning up to €18,000 each also fall below threshold by 2028.
How many workers move out of tax altogether?
The cumulative effect of the 2025 + 2026 changes lifts tens of thousands of workers out of income tax altogether. Caruana's separate companion claim puts the post-Budget-2026 figure at 50,000 workers paying no income tax — that's the order of magnitude. Abela's narrower 'tens of thousands' is comfortably inside that envelope.
Limitations: 'many' is qualitative. The precise running number depends on Inland Revenue post-Budget cohort breakdowns which publish with a 1-2 year lag. Order-of-magnitude (tens of thousands) is robust across reasonable assumptions about the cohort below the new thresholds.
So is the claim accurate?
Yes. The 2025 threshold-widening alone (single +€2,900, married +€2,300, parent +€2,500) materially expanded the zero-tax cohort. The 2026 family-rate restructure adds another layer of widening through 2028. Tens of thousands of Maltese workers now sit below the income-tax threshold who didn't before.
Verdict: True.