Kuwait Withholding tax rates
Kuwait Withholding tax rates: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Kuwait's treatment of payments to non-residents: Kuwaiti tax law imposes NO withholding tax on dividends, interest or royalties. What exists instead is a 5% contract RETENTION under the Executive Bylaws of Law No. 2 of 2008 - money held back from payments to any incorporated body until it produces a tax clearance certificate from the Ministry of Finance. That is a compliance security mechanism, not a final tax, and this record describes it as such.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2008-02-03 |
| Official source | PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries - Kuwait: 'Kuwaiti tax law does not impose withholding tax (WHT).' On retention: 'all public bodies and private entities are required to retain 5% from the contract, agreement, or transaction value or from each payment made to any incorporated body until presentation of a tax clearance certificate, by the recipient of such payment from the MoF'. Basis: Articles 16, 37 and 39 of the Executive Bylaws of Law No. 2 of 2008 amending Amiri Decree No. 3 of 1955. |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | secondary — Corroborated, but the primary instrument was NOT read (usually the publishing host blocks automated access). The Kuwait Tax Authority does not publish a stable official English text of Law No. 2 of 2008 or its Executive Bylaws; the no-WHT position and the 5% retention mechanics (Executive Bylaws Arts. 16, 37, 39) are confirmed through PwC, KPMG and Deloitte Kuwait publications, which are unanimous. The position is long-standing and uncontroversial, but no operative statutory wording is quoted from the primary Arabic instrument. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THERE IS NO SINGLE WITHHOLDING TAX RATE, WHICH IS WHY value IS NULL - and in Kuwait's case there is no withholding tax at all: 'Kuwaiti tax law does not impose withholding tax (WHT)' (PwC). Dividends, interest and royalties paid to non-residents are not subject to any deduction of tax at source as a final levy. The entries below carry rate 0 with that citation, plus one honestly-labelled entry for the thing Kuwait DOES have: a 5% contract retention. THE 5% RETENTION IS NOT A WITHHOLDING TAX. Under Articles 16, 37 and 39 of the Executive Bylaws of Law No. 2 of 2008, every contract owner (public or private) must retain 5% of the contract value or of each payment to any incorporated body, and may release it only when the beneficiary presents a tax clearance certificate (or no-objection letter) from the Ministry of Finance. It is security for the foreign contractor's own 15% corporate income tax assessment - fully releasable once the contractor's tax affairs are settled, and never a final tax on the payment itself. Under Article 39 a contract owner who fails to retain can be held liable for the contractor's tax. Treating the 5% as 'Kuwait's WHT rate' is a category error this record exists to prevent. DIVIDEND NUANCE: dividends from securities listed on Boursa Kuwait have been exempt from tax since Law No. 22 of 2015 (dividends declared after 10 November 2015). Before that, custodians and fund managers deducted 15% tax at source on such dividends paid to foreign corporate bodies; that deduction mechanism survives only to the extent a dividend remains taxable to a foreign corporate recipient under the income tax decree (a CIT collection device, not a treaty-style WHT). Kuwait's corporate income tax itself (15%) applies only to foreign corporate bodies, by assessment. ALL STATEMENTS ARE ABOUT DOMESTIC LAW, BEFORE TREATY RELIEF. With no domestic WHT there is nothing for Kuwait's double-tax agreements to reduce on outbound payments; treaty rate tables for Kuwait are illustrative only. The 2025 Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax for large multinationals (Decree-Law No. 157 of 2024) does not introduce any withholding tax. The series effective_from is 3 February 2008, the date of Law No. 2 of 2008, whose Executive Bylaws carry the current retention rules.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/kw/withholding-tax
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/kw/withholding-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/kw/withholding-taxOther Kuwait series: CBK Discount Rate · Value-added tax (VAT) · VAT registration threshold · National minimum wage (private and oil sector) · Public holidays · Consumer Price Index (latest month) · Corporate income tax rate (foreign-owned share) · Legal interest on commercial debts (الفائدة القانونية) · Personal income tax · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Malaysia · Nepal · Oman · Pakistan · Philippines · all 28