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Zenco Partners

Name: Zenco Partners
Address: Triq in-Negozju, Central Business District, Zone 3, Birkirkara, MT
Telephone: +35679212598

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Zenco Partners are certified public accountants based in Malta with a core expertise on Accounting, Tax & Advisory.

08/10/2026

🗓 Malta's Commercial Yacht Code 2025 took effect on 1 July 2025. If your yacht is 24 metres or over and commercially registered, the clock is running.

The deadline is not one date. Existing yachts must comply by their first renewal survey after 31 December 2025. So your deadline is your own survey date, and 2026 is the transition year.

✅ Four things to check. Which code applies, because only 24 metres and over is under the main one. Your navigational notation, meaning how far from a safe port you may work: 60 nautical miles, 150, or unrestricted. Private yachts over 500 gross tonnes, which must now comply as far as is reasonable and practicable, where it used to be voluntary. And any planned refit, because a large conversion now has to meet full new-build standards.

There is crew work too. Safety training is now mandatory for non-crew personnel, which reaches security staff, a nanny, a seasonal chef.

⚠ The owners who have a bad year are not the ones with old yachts. They are the ones who find out at survey time.

📄 Link in comments.

01/10/2026

📍 Malta runs two residency programmes with the same tax treatment. The Residence Programme, or TRP, is for EU, EEA and Swiss nationals. The Global Residence Programme, or GRP, is for everyone else.

✅ The terms: a flat 15% on foreign income you bring into Malta, foreign capital gains exempt even when you bring them in, and a minimum annual tax of 15,000 euros. You need property in Malta, from 275,000 euros to buy in the north or centre, or 220,000 in the south and Gozo. Rental starts at 9,600 euros a year. The application fee is 6,000 euros.

⚠ Two things people get wrong.

A programme is not always cheaper. Ordinary non-dom residence has a lower minimum tax and no property threshold, so the flat 15% only pays for itself above a certain level of remittance. That is arithmetic, worth modelling.

And the Malta Permanent Residence Programme is a different thing entirely. It grants residence rights, not a tax status, and costs far more.

📄 Link in comments.

29/09/2026

🗓 On 6 April 2025 the UK ended its non-dom regime, after about two hundred years.

What replaced it is far narrower. Four years of relief for new arrivals, and only if they were not UK resident for the previous ten. Inheritance tax now follows residence, so worldwide assets come into charge after a long enough stay.

📉 People moved fast. By October 2025 at least 1,800 non-doms had left, about half again as many as the government's own forecaster expected. Companies House logged 3,790 directors switching to non-UK addresses in ten months, up 40% on the year before.

📍 Malta's regime has not changed. Foreign income is taxed only if you bring it into Malta. Foreign capital gains stay exempt even when you do, which most remittance systems do not allow. And there is no deemed domicile clock, so it does not expire on a timetable.

Compare that with Italy at a flat 300,000 euros a year, or Greece at 100,000 plus a 500,000 euro investment.

For a yacht owner the EU part is not a lifestyle point. It is a VAT and customs point.

📄 Link in comments.

22/09/2026

⚓ Three flags come up in nearly every conversation about a large yacht. They are not competing on price.

Cayman carries about a quarter of the world's superyachts. Red Ensign standing, registration in about a day, and no island income tax. Published costs start near 5,500 US dollars to register, about 3,575 a year after.

The Marshall Islands is the third-largest registry and the cheapest serious option, from about 1,650 to 3,250 US dollars. It allows up to 84 days of commercial use a year without full commercial registration.

📍 Malta is an EU flag and the largest registry in Europe. Standard VAT 18%, and 12% for qualifying short-term charters, with the leasing framework and the Fiscal Unit behind it.

⚠ Here is the line that decides it. Cayman and the Marshall Islands are not EU flags and have no VAT leasing framework. If the yacht summers in the Mediterranean, it is inside the EU VAT system whatever flag it flies.

And on a multi-million euro yacht, the gap between these annual fees is a rounding error.

📄 Link in comments.

17/09/2026

📉 Malta's headline corporate tax rate is 35%. The effective rate for shareholders can be 5%. The gap between those two numbers is a cash flow problem.

The usual route: the company pays 35%, then shareholders claim back six sevenths on trading profits. That lands at roughly 5%. The refund is reliable, but it takes two to four months in practice.

On a million euros of profit, that is around 300,000 euros sitting with the tax authority for a season instead of paying a yard bill.

✅ The Fiscal Unit removes the wait. Where a parent holds at least 95% of a subsidiary, the group can be treated as one taxpayer and pay once, which for qualifying trading profits can work out at roughly 5%. There is no 35% payment up front and no refund claim to make.

⚠ One condition catches people: it needs a group. A single standalone company cannot elect.

📄 Link in comments.

15/09/2026

Owners usually understand the idea behind a Malta leasing structure before they understand the work.

✅ The idea is simple. A Malta company owns the yacht and leases it to the person using it, so VAT is paid on the lease rather than on the purchase price.

⚠ The work is where deals slow down. The registration route has to be decided before anything is signed. The company has to exist and be registered for VAT before the first instalment falls due. The lease has to be agreed before the purchase completes. And the evidence file starts on the first voyage, not in year two.

🗓 Then it settles into a yearly rhythm: VAT returns, accounts, and a review of how much of the year the yacht actually spent outside EU waters.

We set out the order of events, the documents, and the three things that most often go wrong.

📄 Link in comments.

14/09/2026

⚠ The UK's non-dom regime ended in April 2025. Malta's has not changed.

✅ Foreign income is taxed only if you bring it into Malta. Foreign capital gains stay exempt even when you do. There is no deemed domicile clock, so the treatment does not expire on a timetable.

📄 Our full guide to Malta residency and tax planning for yacht owners is in the comments.

⏱ If your timeline is short, our door is open. Email [email protected] or message us on WhatsApp at +356 7921 2598.

10/09/2026

📉 Since January 2024 Malta has charged 12% VAT on short-term yacht charters instead of 18%. That is six points off a qualifying charter. The conditions are narrower than most people assume.

✅ Three things have to be true. The charter runs no more than 90 days. It starts in Malta. And the same charterer gets a maximum of five weeks at the reduced rate in any twelve-month period.

That third one catches people. It is not a standard rate kept all season. It is an allowance for each different charterer, and it runs out.

It also does not settle whether a charter is a genuine business activity. That is a separate test, decided on what actually happens.

💶 Set against the rest of the Mediterranean it still reads well. Spain is at 21% with no relief for high seas time, Greece at 24%, Cyprus at 19%.

We set out what qualifies, what does not, and where the five week limit bites.

📄 Link in comments.

08/09/2026

Most superyacht owners work with a broker, a maritime lawyer, a flag agent, a crew manager, a VAT accountant, and a personal tax adviser. Each one is competent.

The problem is the space between them. Every adviser owns a piece and nobody owns the picture, so the questions that fall between pieces never get asked.

It shows up in ordinary ways. The yacht gets registered privately, then a VAT plan is built that only works commercially. Neither adviser was wrong. Nobody put them in the same room.

And when it is examined, money-laundering checks, VAT inspections and crew welfare rules all ask the same thing: is the record complete and consistent. They do not care which firm handled which filing. "Another adviser dealt with that" is not an answer.

The fix is not fewer specialists. It is somebody holding the whole thing.

Link in comments.

07/09/2026

The UK's non-dom regime ended in April 2025. Malta's has not changed.

Foreign income is taxed only if you bring it into Malta. Foreign capital gains stay exempt even when you do. There is no deemed domicile clock, so the treatment does not expire on a timetable.

We publish a full guide to Malta residency and tax planning for yacht owners on 16 September.

If your timeline is shorter than that, our door is open. Email [email protected] or message us on WhatsApp at +356 7921 2598.

Address

Triq In-Negozju, Central Business District, Zone 3
Birkirkara

Opening Hours

Monday	09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:00
Thursday	09:00 - 17:00
Friday	09:00 - 17:00

Telephone

+35679212598

Website

https://zencopartners.com/

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