Capital Gains Tax on Property in Morocco (TPI), Explained

TPI applies to the profit made on the sale of a building, apartment, land or any real right attached to it, as long as the property sits in Morocco, along with related situations such as expropriation, a court-ordered transfer of ownership, or the sale of shares in a company whose assets are mostly real estate. The trigger is where the property is, not where the seller lives, as set out in Article 61-II of the Code Général des Impôts.

The taxable profit itself is the sale price, minus your selling costs, minus the purchase price and your original buying costs. Those buying costs matter more than most sellers expect: notary fees, registration duties and land registry charges from the original purchase all get added back to your acquisition cost, which lowers the taxable gain.

The headline rate is 20% of the net profit, fixed under Article 73-II-F of the Code Général des Impôts. But the tax code also sets a floor: whatever the profit turns out to be, even zero or a loss, the seller must still pay a minimum of 3% of the total sale price. This minimum contribution is set out in Article 144-II-1° of the Code Général des Impôts.

In practice, the calculation runs both ways and you owe the higher figure. If the property has genuinely gained value, 20% of the profit will usually exceed 3% of the sale price. If it has not, or the sale is close to break-even, the 3% minimum is what gets collected. There is no scenario, short of a specific exemption, where a sale generates no tax bill.

Your acquisition cost is not just the price on the old deed. Under Article 65-II, it is built up from several pieces:

That last point matters more than it sounds. Without the revaluation coefficient, someone who bought a flat twenty years ago would be taxed as if all of the price rise since then were pure profit, when much of it is simply the dirham buying less than it used to. The coefficient strips that out, so only the real gain is taxed.

If you have used the property as your main home for at least five years before the sale, the profit is exempt from TPI entirely, under Article 63-II-B. This is written with Moroccans abroad specifically in mind: the code extends the exemption to a home that "Moroccans resident abroad keep as their residence in Morocco," or one occupied rent-free by their spouse, parents or children. You can only use this exemption once every five years, and if the property has stood empty, you get a one-year grace period to complete the sale and still qualify.

There is a catch worth knowing before you price a sale. Under Article 144-II-2°, if the sale price of an exempt main residence exceeds 4,000,000 dirhams, a minimum tax of 3% still applies to the portion of the price above that threshold. So a qualifying main residence sold for 3 million dirhams owes nothing, but one sold for 6 million owes 3% on the 2 million above the cap, even though the exemption otherwise applies.

A handful of other situations fall outside TPI completely:

None of these are ways around the tax for an ordinary sale to a buyer outside the family. They exist for specific transfers, and the tax authority applies them narrowly.

Whoever sells must file a declaration with the tax collector's office within 30 days of the sale, alongside payment of the tax due, under Article 83 of the Code Général des Impôts. In practice, this rarely lands on the seller as a separate task to remember. Since the sale price is usually only released once the tax is settled, the notary handling the signing typically calculates and collects the TPI on the spot, from the sale proceeds, before any money moves.

Keep every receipt from your original purchase and any renovation work regardless. If the acquisition cost cannot be documented, the tax administration is entitled to estimate it, which tends to work against the seller rather than for them.

The tax is charged because the property is in Morocco, not because of where you happen to live, so an owner in London or Dubai faces exactly the same 20% rate, the same 3% minimum, and the same main residence exemption as an owner in Casablanca. Nothing about being an MRE or a foreign national changes the calculation itself.

What does need planning is what happens after the tax is paid. Getting the net proceeds transferred out of Morocco depends on how the original purchase was funded, a separate question we cover in detail in our guide to repatriating money after selling a property in Morocco. Budget for TPI before you agree a sale price, not after, since it comes off the top at the notary's office regardless of where you plan to send the rest.