What are the two rules for Cyprus tax residency for individuals?

The 183-day rule (individual remains in Cyprus for periods aggregating more than 183 days in the tax year) and the 60-day rule (a package of conditions including at least 60 days in Cyprus, a Cyprus business, employment or office, permanent Cyprus residence, and not more than 183 days in any other single state). Both are set out in Article 2 of the Income Tax Law.

Are Cyprus tax residency certificate requests made by form or by letter?

Both. The T.D.126 form is the declaration form under the 60-day rule. In practice many requests are made by letter rather than through the form, which opens a direct evidentiary conversation with the district Tax Office. The letter route sidesteps the form's printed checklist but not the questions.

Cyprus tax residency: what the file has to show

Q: What did the 2026 tax reform change about the Cyprus 60-day rule?

The reform removed the condition that the individual not be tax resident in any other state. It retained the parallel condition that the individual not remain in any other single state for periods exceeding 183 days in aggregate. The 'not tax resident elsewhere' limb is gone from 1 January 2026; the 'not 183 days elsewhere' day-count limb remains. The 183-day rule was not touched.

Q: What evidence does the Cyprus Tax Office ask for to issue a Tax Residency Certificate?

Circular 1/2022 requires evidence of business, employment or office in Cyprus, evidence of the permanent Cyprus residence, and evidence of upcoming foreign-source income where applicable. Form T.D.126 additionally prints a checklist of passports with entry and exit stamps, boarding passes and electronic tickets, property title or lease contract, and employment contract in force at 31 December of the tax year. In recent practice the Tax Office has been asking for bank statements showing spending in Cyprus, which are not on the form. District practices vary.

Cyprus tax residency for individuals is defined in Article 2 of the Income Tax Law by two rules and a specific set of conditions. It is applied at the counter by the evidence the Tax Office is willing to accept for those conditions. Both matter. In practice the second is where files stall, and the evidence bar has been rising.

The two rules

The Law recognises two routes to residency. The 183-day rule applies where an individual remains in the Republic for one or more periods that in aggregate exceed 183 days in the tax year. Nothing else needs to be shown. The count is calendar year. Arrival day counts as a day in the Republic; departure day counts as a day out; same-day arrival and departure counts as a day in; same-day departure and return counts as a day out.

The 60-day rule applies where an individual does not remain in any other single state for periods that in aggregate exceed 183 days in the same tax year, provided cumulatively three further conditions are satisfied: at least 60 days in the Republic in the tax year; a business, an employment, or an office in a Cyprus tax resident company held at any time in the year and not terminated during it; and a permanent residence in the Republic that the individual owns or rents.

What the 2026 reform changed, and did not

The tax reform in force from 1 January 2026 removed one of the conditions the 60-day rule previously carried: the requirement that the individual not be tax resident in any other state. That limb was described in the market as the not-tax-resident-elsewhere test, and it required the applicant to establish, positively, that no other jurisdiction would treat the individual as its resident for the same tax year. From 2026 it is no longer part of Cyprus's own residency definition. Dual-residency situations run through the applicable treaty tie-breaker where one applies.

What the reform did not touch is the parallel condition requiring that the individual not remain in any other single state for periods exceeding 183 days in aggregate. That condition is still in Article 2. It is a day-count condition, not a status condition, but it demands the same category of evidence: proof of where the individual actually was, day by day, for the tax year. The reform is described as a relaxation. In evidential terms it is not.

What the Tax Office asks for

Published guidance on evidence is limited. Circular 1/2022 governs the 60-day rule and sets what the file has to include: evidence of a business, employment or office in Cyprus; evidence of the maintained permanent residence in the Republic; evidence of upcoming foreign-source income where applicable; and, where the certificate is requested before 60 days have elapsed in the tax year, satisfaction of the Registrar as to the reasons for early issuance. Documents in other languages must be translated into Greek or English and certified.

The declaration form for individuals, T.D.126, prints a specific evidence checklist: copies of passports with entry and exit stamps, boarding passes and electronic tickets for the day count; property title for owned residence or lease contract for rented residence; and employment contract in force at 31 December of the tax year. The form does not ask for utility bills. The form does not ask for bank statements.

In practice the Tax Office has been asking for more. Over recent tax years the evidentiary conversation has moved through three phases. The first phase treated Cyprus Electricity Authority consumption bills as sufficient corroboration of actual presence, with consumption levels used to justify the day count. The second phase added boarding passes to the electricity bills for a joined-up day count that matched the form's own passports-and-tickets checklist. The third phase, now increasingly common across districts, asks for bank statements showing spending on sufficient days in Cyprus. Nothing on the form asks for these documents. They are what the Tax Office asks for at the counter, or in response to a letter that opens the conversation.

The retained limb, and why the evidence conversation was not relaxed

The reform removed the not-tax-resident-elsewhere limb but retained the not-183-days-elsewhere limb. The distinction matters. The removed limb was a status question: was the individual by law resident somewhere else. The retained limb is a day-count question: where the individual actually was.

Bank statements resolve both questions with a single document. A pattern of card transactions in Cyprus on days across the tax year evidences presence in Cyprus, day by day. The absence of card transactions elsewhere for extended stretches evidences that the individual was not, in fact, spending long periods in another single state. That is exactly what the retained limb of the 60-day rule requires the file to demonstrate. It is why the bank-statement request has become an increasingly standard part of the district conversation.

The letter route, and district variance

In practice tax residency certificate requests are often made by letter rather than by the T.D.126 form. The letter route sidesteps the form's printed checklist, but not the Tax Office's evidentiary questions. If anything, the letter opens the conversation earlier and more directly. The evidence the applicant is asked to supply in response to the letter is the same evidence a form-based application would face at the counter.

Practice varies between district offices. Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and Famagusta each set their own tempo for what the file has to show. The direction of travel is uniform even if the pace is not. Bank statements have become an expected part of the file in recent months across districts, on top of the passports-and-boarding-passes baseline the form itself prescribes.

Where we are in the transition

The 2025 tax year is being processed under the pre-2026 60-day rule. Applications for the tax residency certificate for 2025 will still be tested against the removed limb, which means the applicant has to establish they were not tax resident elsewhere in 2025, as well as against the retained limbs. Applications for the 2026 tax year will be the first tested against the amended definition, and how the Tax Office will apply the amended text in practice is not yet observable. A residency-specific interpretive note on the amendment has not been published at the time of writing.

For 2026, the residency test on paper is looser. Whether the evidence conversation loosens with it, or continues on the retained day-count limb of the 60-day rule, will only become clear as 2026 files start to be assessed.

The arrangements are the file the Tax Office reads

Cyprus tax residency is not a certificate issued on the strength of the applicant's honest word. It is a certificate issued on the strength of the file. The arrangements the individual has in place, the days spent in Cyprus, the days spent elsewhere, the Cyprus business, employment or office, the Cyprus permanent residence, the pattern of daily life, all matter. And so does the paper trail that lets the file demonstrate them.

The reform did not change that. It changed which limb of the 60-day rule the file has to answer. The evidence bar it takes to answer the retained limb has not gone anywhere. Where the Tax Office is asking for bank statements alongside passports and boarding passes, the request is not administrative overreach; it is the file it needs to satisfy the retained day-count condition on paper.

This piece sits alongside the framework rules, the Non-Dom application mechanics, and the corporate analogue of the arrangements-and-demonstration frame.

Cyprus tax residency.What the file has to show.