Inheritance tax in Monaco: who pays, at what rate, and what has to be filed

Yes. Monaco charges succession duty on assets situated in the Principality, whatever the deceased's domicile, residence or nationality. Loi n° 276 of 2 October 1939, Art. 1er taxes the net share by kinship: 4% between partners of a contrat de vie commune, 8% between siblings, 10% between uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, 13% between other collaterals, 16% between unrelated persons. For the direct line and for spouses the tax department publishes 0%.

Monaco taxes a succession. The duty is the droits de mutation par décès, duties on transfers by death, and the government's own Welcome Office guide summarises it in a line: the tax depends on the degree of kinship between the deceased and the heir, and the rate varies from 0 to 16%. Whether that makes the Principality a tax haven has a page of its own: Company in Monaco: Is Monaco a Tax Haven?

Every English explainer measured for this page says 0% in the direct line, several as a statement of Monegasque law. The figure is right, the attribution is not. Loi n° 276 Art. 1er lists five relationships and parents and children are in none of them; Arts. 15 to 18 of Loi n° 580 list four, and none of those either. No exempting sentence for the direct line was found in Loi n° 276, Loi n° 580, Loi n° 223 of 27 July 1936, Loi n° 704 or the ordinance of 29 April 1828.

For a spouse the source exists, with a date. Loi n° 704 of 5 June 1961, Art. 1er provides that gratuitous transfers between spouses are no longer subject, from 1 June 1961, to the 4% proportional duty of Art. 12 of Loi n° 580, and Art. 2 repeals that Art. 12 with paragraphs 2 and 3 of Art. 1er of Loi n° 276. The words are mutations à titre gratuit, which covers gifts between spouses as well as deaths. The exemption reaches spouses and nobody else: it is not stretched here to the direct line.

The government's succession factsheet, updated on 30 July 2026, prints five rows, 0, 8, 10, 13 and 16%, and no 4% row. Statute and factsheet disagree, and the statute controls. In civil law a partner taxed at 4% is not an heir: Art. 651 of the Code civil gives only a year's use of the home.

The duty follows the asset. The tax department writes that succession and transfer duties apply to property situated in the territory of the Principality or having its assiette, its seat, there, whatever the domicile, residence or nationality of the deceased or the donor, subject to the France-Monaco convention of 1 April 1950. Nothing in that rule turns on where an heir lives, so moving a beneficiary changes nothing on the Monegasque side, whatever Monaco residency does for other purposes. Shares in a property-holding civil company are Monegasque assets; the company itself belongs to SCI Monaco.

Gifts are taxed as mutations à titre gratuit, and their bands sit in Loi n° 580: 8% between brothers and sisters (Art. 15), 10% between uncles or aunts and nephews or nieces (Art. 16, 1°), 13% between other collaterals (Art. 17) and 16% between unrelated persons (Art. 18). Partners of a contrat de vie commune are at 4% under Art. 21-1, with the ten-year clawback set out above. For spouses, Loi n° 704 covers gratuitous transfers in general, so a gift between spouses sits inside the 1961 exemption.

Art. 21-2 of Loi n° 580, created by Loi n° 1.529 of 29 July 2022, reaches assets, rights or capitalised products situated in Monaco and placed in a trust governed by foreign law. Their transfer to a beneficiary, in a lifetime or on death, bears gratuitous-transfer duty on net market value, and the band is fixed by the kinship between the constituant, the settlor, and the beneficiary, proved in writing from official documents. Setting such a structure up is a different subject.

No application exists here, only deadlines set in 1828 and 1953. Where no period is published, this page says so rather than estimate one.

Two texts are consolidated and in force, and they say different things. Art. 27 of Loi n° 580 sets a fine of 1% of the duty per month or part of a month of delay, never more than half the simple duty, and, where the declaration gives rise to no duty, a periodic penalty of EUR 10 a month or part of a month. Art. 37 of the 1828 ordinance sets half a duty in addition for a late declaration, and one full duty in addition for omissions and under-valuations, including under-valued lifetime gifts, plus the experts' costs.

Paying nothing and filing nothing are different things, and the explainers stop at the first. Art. 1er of Loi n° 704 keeps the declaration in place for spouses where the estate holds immovable property or a fonds de commerce: the succession is declared in the forms the registration law sets, and the formality is given free of charge. Succession declarations sit on the government's own list of acts that must be registered, with imperative deadlines.

Civil law and tax law answer different questions here, and the search results mix them. Under Arts. 780, 781 and 783 of the Code civil, gifts and legacies may not exceed half the estate where there is one child, a third where there are two, a quarter where there are three or more. With no child, half is reserved where ascendants survive in both lines and three quarters where they survive in one; with neither descendants nor ascendants, the whole estate may be disposed of freely.

Six year-stamped searches ask about 2022, and the kinship bands are not where anything moved. The 8, 10, 13 and 16% headings of Loi n° 580 carry no amendment note after 1 January 2002, the date given by Loi n° 1.247 of 21 December 2001; what that law altered was not read for this page and is not described. Around the bands, three changes are dated: the 4% band for partners from 27 June 2020 (Loi n° 1.481), foreign-law trusts from 29 July 2022 (Loi n° 1.529), and the EUR 50 fixed duty with the property bands from 1 October 2023 (Loi n° 1.548).

Both government pages that state the territorial rule attach a reservation to it: the rule applies subject to the France-Monaco convention of 1 April 1950 on successions. That is what the sources say and this page goes no further. The text of the convention was not read, nothing is quoted from it, no condition is attached to it and no effect is described. Two pages ranking on this query are built entirely on it, one asserting a total exemption and another a five-year residence condition; neither claim is tested here. French succession tax is French law and belongs with a French adviser.