Taxes in Belize 2026 — What Is Really Untaxed, and What Quietly Is Not
BELIZE · TAX
Foreign pensions go untouched, and the supermarket till does not. Taxes in Belize are narrow rather than absent, and the line between the two is sharp.
Key facts
What this is — Belize is a small English-speaking country on the Caribbean coast of Central America.
What is taxed — Income earned inside Belize is taxed at 25 percent, and most goods carry 12.5 percent sales tax.
What is not — Wages below BZD 29,000 a year, about US$14,500, are untaxed, and so is all foreign income.
Also untaxed — Belize levies no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax on anyone living there.
The catch — Sales tax, land tax and the 8 percent stamp duty on land purchases apply to foreigners too.
The retirement route — The Qualified Retired Persons programme shelters foreign income but bars taking a job in Belize.
What changed — Belize now exchanges bank account data with other tax offices under the OECD reporting standard.
Belize charges income tax at 25 percent, and most relocation guides leave that out. Taxes in Belize are narrow rather than absent, and the difference decides a budget.
The country said to charge nothing
Belize turns up on relocation lists as a place with no taxes. The Income and Business Tax Act, Chapter 55, says otherwise on its opening pages.
The Act charges 25 percent on chargeable income accruing in or derived from Belize. That last clause carries the whole story.
Income earned outside the country falls outside the charge. The Act never declares foreign income exempt, because it never reaches for it in the first place.
Tax Atlas, a comparative tax database, described the system as territorial in an update on 9 August 2026. The Lex Mundi country guide quoted the same statutory wording on 11 September 2026.
A pension paid from Ohio or Ontario is therefore not Belize’s business. A consulting invoice written at a desk in San Pedro is.
Twenty-five percent, and where it begins
Employees pay that same flat 25 percent on wages earned in Belize. Belize raised the entry point to BZD 29,000 a year (about US$14,500) with effect from 1 January 2025.
The Income and Business Tax Amendment Act 40 of 2024 made that change. Below that line, an employed resident owes nothing on wages at all.
The chamber of commerce page that still carries BZD 26,000 (about US$13,000) dates from July 2023. A newcomer who budgets from it is working with the old floor.
Belize levies no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Those two absences are real, and they are the honest half of the country’s reputation.
The Social Security Board still takes a contribution from every wage packet. It is banded by weekly earnings and deducted at source, employer and employee together.
The Act also taxes petroleum operations at 40 percent, a rate no newcomer will ever meet. The ordinary resident meets a different tax entirely.
The tax on receipts, not on profit
Belize taxes businesses on gross receipts rather than on profit. A business pays whether or not it earned anything that month.
The Act sets 1.75 percent on receipts from general trade or business. Rents, royalties and other receipts from real property carry 3 percent.
The Belize Tax Service Department’s business and income tax guide sets the rent trigger at BZD 800 a month (about US$400). Above that line, the 3 percent falls due every month.
Tax guides published in 2026 by JurisDB, Expanship and HeadOffice all put professional services at 6 percent. The Ninth Schedule of the Act taxes commissions at 15 percent.
A proviso in that schedule softens the rate at the bottom. Commissions of less than BZD 25,000 a year (about US$12,500) are charged at 5 percent.
Radio, television and newspaper receipts sit far lower, at 0.75 percent. A foreign owner letting two apartments sits on the 3 percent line instead.
Twelve and a half percent at the counter
Belize’s General Sales Tax stands at 12.5 percent. Section 9 of the General Sales Tax Act, Chapter 63, applies it to taxable supplies and to imports.
Zero-rated goods sit in the first three schedules of that Act, and exempt supplies in the fourth. Those schedules decide which half of a grocery basket carries the tax.
A business must register once annual turnover reaches BZD 75,000 (about US$37,500). The tax department’s registration page carried that threshold on 29 April 2026.
A younger business registers when monthly taxable supplies average BZD 6,250 (about US$3,125). The department’s general questions page repeated both figures on 3 March 2026.
For a household, the sales tax is the tax it meets most often. It is also the one no residency programme takes away.
The tax on the ground, not on the house
Outside town and city boundaries, Belize taxes land under the Land Tax Act, Chapter 58. The charge falls on the ground itself, not on what stands on it.
The Valuation Unit of the Ministry of Natural Resources puts the rate at 1 percent of the unimproved value. A statutory instrument of 2016 last replaced the schedule of unimproved land values on which that 1 percent is calculated.
That instrument is the Land Tax (Fourth Schedule Replacement) Order 2016. It was gazetted on 19 March 2016 and took effect on 1 April 2016.
Unimproved value means the land priced as if it were bare. Build a house, a pool and a dock, and the annual bill stays where it was.
Inside the municipalities, town and city councils set their own rates and publish them separately. No single national figure covers what a house in Belize City or San Ignacio costs to hold.
Transfers carry the larger number. The Stamp Duties Act, Chapter 64, exempts the first BZD 20,000 (about US$10,000) of a land transfer.
Above that line the Act charges 5 percent to a Belize citizen, a Belizean company or a qualifying CARICOM national.
Everyone else pays 8 percent. That is the rate most foreigners meet when they buy property in Belize.
What the border charges
Belize sets import duties on the CARICOM common external tariff, the shared customs schedule of the Caribbean Community. The US Department of Commerce put the range at zero to 120 percent, averaging 20 percent.
Its country commercial guide of 28 February 2024 carried that figure. An environmental tax rides on top of nearly every import alongside the duty.
The same US guide put that environmental tax at 3 percent, excluding some medicines and foods. The Inter-American Development Bank put it at 2 percent of customs value in an April 2025 note.
A World Trade Organization review of Belize also recorded 2 percent. Belize Customs has published nothing since that settles which rate a shipper meets today.
Vehicles carry their own band, at 2 to 5 percent depending on type. A Revenue Replacement Duty falls on 219 tariff lines, mostly between 5 and 50 percent, on the development bank’s count.
Shipping a container of furniture is a taxed event, not a free one. The bill is settled before the goods leave the port.
What the retirement programme actually removes
The Retired Persons (Incentives) Act, Chapter 62, is the one real shelter on offer. Section 4(4) exempts a qualified retired person from all taxes on income arising outside Belize.
That covers earned and passive income alike, whether or not the money is remitted. The Belize Tourism Board adds capital gains tax and inheritance tax to the list on its programme page.
The board’s page, last updated on 15 September 2025, sets the entry age at 40. It requires retirement income of US$2,000 a month, or US$24,000 a year, from a foreign source.
The Act itself, in the version the Belize Financial Services Commission publishes, still sets the minimum at 45. The board has been publishing 40, and applicants work from the board’s page.
The Retired Persons (Incentives) Amendment Act 2023 lowered the age to 40. The published consolidation of Chapter 62 has not caught up with it.
A first entry brings personal effects and one approved vehicle in free of duty, with a replacement vehicle every three years. The wider case for retiring in Belize runs well beyond the tax line.
And what it leaves standing
The tourism board’s exemption list stops at foreign income, capital gains and inheritance. Sales tax, land tax and stamp duty are not on it.
A qualified retired person still pays 12.5 percent at the supermarket till. The land tax on a beachfront lot arrives every year regardless of status.
The programme also carries no right to take a job in Belize. The board describes a resident card and multiple entry, not employment.
It is not permanent residency either, and it opens no path to a passport. Naturalisation runs through five years of permanent residency, which is a separate door entirely.
The shelter is therefore real and narrow. It protects the pension, and it leaves the grocery bill exactly where it was.
The decade that closed the quiet part
Belize once sold a company that paid almost nothing and could not trade with residents. That arrangement ended when the amended International Business Companies Act was gazetted on 30 March 2019.
The amendment removed the ring-fence and required a physical presence in the country. Orbitax, a tax news service, dated the change to 1 January 2019, with grandfathering until 30 June 2021.
The Economic Substance Act followed, gazetted on 12 October 2019. A company registered in Belize now has to show that it does something in Belize.
Belize signed the multilateral agreement behind the Common Reporting Standard on 29 October 2015. Its tax department’s guidance notes say exchanges of account data were to begin from 2017.
New Zealand’s revenue service listed Belize among the committed jurisdictions on 18 March 2026. A bank balance held in Belize now travels to the account holder’s home tax office.
Where Belize sits on the scale
The Council of the European Union added Belize to its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions in October 2023. The government press office traced it to a partially compliant rating from the OECD Global Forum.
The Council removed Belize from that list on 20 February 2024. It moved the country to the annex for jurisdictions that have given commitments.
Belize has not returned to the main list since. The Council’s update of 17 February 2026 left the country where it was.
The Council still records Belize as waiting for an in-depth review by the Global Forum.
That is the direction of travel. Secrecy narrows, the rules steady, and the 25 percent on Belize income stays exactly where it was.
The Belize dollar is pegged to the US dollar at two to one. It held at that rate on 16 September 2026, and every conversion above uses it.
A newcomer who earns abroad and spends in Belize meets the sales tax and the land tax, and little else. A newcomer who earns in Belize meets the entire code.
Which of the two a person becomes is usually settled in the first year of living there. It is rarely settled on the application form.
Correction, 16 September 2026: an earlier version of this article put the income tax threshold at BZD 26,000 (about US$13,000). It is BZD 29,000 a year (about US$14,500), in force since 1 January 2025.
It credited the European Commission with a delisting on 10 October 2025. The Council of the European Union removed Belize from the list on 20 February 2024.
It dated the land tax rate to a ministerial order of 1983. A statutory instrument of 2016 last replaced the schedule of unimproved land values.
It also said only some circulating copies of the Act carried 45 as the minimum age. The text the Belize Financial Services Commission publishes still reads 45.
And it traced the two rates on commissions to third-party guides. They sit in the Ninth Schedule of the Income and Business Tax Act.
The article has been corrected.
More: Belize news in English
Sources: Income and Business Tax Act Chapter 55 (Attorney General’s Ministry), Income and Business Tax (Amendment) Act 40 of 2024, Belize Tax Service Department, General Sales Tax Act Chapter 63, Stamp Duties Act Chapter 64, Land Tax Act Chapter 58, Land Tax (Fourth Schedule Replacement) Order 2016, Ministry of Natural Resources Valuation Unit, Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Belize Tourism Board, Retired Persons (Incentives) Act Chapter 62, Retired Persons (Incentives) Amendment Act 2023, US Department of Commerce, Inter-American Development Bank, Council of the European Union, Belize Financial Services Commission, New Zealand Inland Revenue, Tax Atlas, Lex Mundi, Orbitax. https://www.agm.gov.bz/uploads/laws/63976e6032352_Cap_55_Income_and_Business_Tax_Act.pdf and https://www.nationalassembly.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Act-No.-40-of-2024-Income-and-Business-Tax-Amendment-Act-2024.pdf and https://bts.gov.bz/registration-faq/ and https://bts.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Chap-63-General-Sales-Tax-Act.pdf and https://bccar.bz/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Cap_64_Stamp_Duties_Act.pdf and https://belizelandprofessionals.com/landinfo/belize_land_tax_act_sub_cap058s.pdf and https://www.belize.org/trade-investment-zone/investment-regime/tax-regime/ and https://www.belizetourismboard.org/programs-events/retirement-program/ and https://www.belizefsc.org.bz/wp-content/uploads/1999/04/2020-Cap-62-Retired-Persons-Incentives-Act.pdf and https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/belize-import-tariffs and https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Trade-Policy-Scope-and-Taxation-Study-in-Belize.pdf and https://www.nationalassembly.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Act-No.-1-of-2019-International-Business-Companies.pdf and https://www.nationalassembly.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Act-No.-15-of-2019-Economic-Substance-Act-2019.pdf and https://bts.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Belize-CRS-Guidance-Notes-.pdf and https://www.ird.govt.nz/international-tax/exchange-of-information/crs/aeoi-and-crs/jurisdictions-committed-to-the-crs
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