Kuwait corporate tax rate

What this value means

FLAT 15% on net taxable profit, replacing the old sliding scale that peaked at 55%. Law No. 2 of 2008 amended Income Tax Decree No. 3 of 1955 and applies to accounting periods from 2008 onward; effective_from is set to the promulgation of Law No. 2 of 2008 (Feb 2008). OWNERSHIP SCOPE IS THE WHOLE POINT — this is not a general corporate tax. It is charged on FOREIGN 'corporate bodies' (non-GCC) carrying on trade or business in Kuwait directly or through an agent, and on GCC-incorporated companies only to the extent of non-GCC ownership. A company incorporated in Kuwait or another GCC state and wholly owned by GCC nationals is NOT subject to it. In a joint venture, only the foreign partner's profit share is taxed, so the effective burden depends on the shareholding split, not on the entity. Individuals are not liable in this series — a foreign individual carrying on business in Kuwait is outside the 15% corporate charge (see the income-tax series). WHAT KUWAITI/GCC-OWNED COMPANIES PAY INSTEAD, and which must NOT be reported as corporate income tax: Zakat at 1% of net annual profit on Kuwaiti shareholding companies (Law No. 46 of 2006, rules in Ministerial Order No. 58 of 2007, payable as Zakat or to the state budget); National Labour Support Tax at 2.5% of net annual profit on companies listed on Boursa Kuwait (Law No. 19 of 2000); and a 1% KFAS contribution to the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences on shareholding companies. PILLAR TWO — YES, KUWAIT HAS ENACTED A DMTT (the brief's check confirms positively): Decree-Law No. 157 of 2024 promulgating the Multinational Entity Group Tax Law was issued on 31 December 2024 and imposes a 15% Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax aligned with the OECD GloBE rules, applying to fiscal years commencing on or after 1 JANUARY 2025. It bites on constituent entities in Kuwait of MNE groups with consolidated revenue of EUR 750m or more in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years. The Ministry of Finance issued the Executive Regulations (116 articles) by Ministerial Decision No. 55 of 2025 on 29 June 2025; in-scope entities had until 30 September 2025 to register penalty-free, returns and payment are due 15 months after year end, and late filing draws the higher of KWD 1,000 or 5-20% of tax due. NOTE THE INTERACTION: the DMTT can pull in the Kuwaiti/GCC-owned groups that the 15% ownership-scoped CIT does not reach, so from FY2025 'Kuwaiti-owned means untaxed' is no longer safe for large multinationals — but the two are separate charges under separate laws and the DMTT is NOT the headline corporate rate. Kuwait also has no capital gains tax separate from this regime (gains of taxable foreign bodies are taxed as business profits) and no withholding tax as such, though a 5% retention regime on contract payments operates as a collection mechanism. ACCESS PROBLEM: the Ministry of Finance's own PDF of the law (https://www.mof.gov.kw/Desicions/Decree/PDF/Q3_1955e.pdf) is the correct primary citation but mof.gov.kw refused TCP connections (ECONNREFUSED on 193.33.224.252) from this location throughout confirmation; the e.gov.kw portal returned HTTP 403 and KUNA (official state news agency, which carried the MoF announcement of the DMTT regulations on 30 Jun 2025) refused connections on 62.215.225.132. Swap the source to the MoF PDF as soon as that host is reachable.

Get it programmatically

curl https://mearef.dev/v1/kw/corporate-tax
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://mearef.dev/v1/kw/corporate-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://mearef.dev/provenance/kw/corporate-tax

Other Kuwait series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · income tax rates