The income tax scale applied to salaries has six brackets: the first, up to 40,000 dirhams of annual net taxable income, is exempt, then 10%, 20%, 30%, 34%, and 37% above 180,000 dirhams. That is the scale in article 73-I of the Code général des impôts (Morocco’s general tax code), 2026 edition, read on the text published by the Direction générale des impôts (DGI, the tax authority) on 7 August 2026.
This guide is informational and is not tax advice. For a personal case, contact the Direction générale des impôts or a chartered accountant.
The scale in force
Article 73-I of the Code général des impôts, 2026 edition published by the DGI. The amounts apply to annual net taxable income, not to gross salary.
| Annual net taxable income | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to 40,000 MAD | 0% (exempt) |
| 40,001 to 60,000 MAD | 10% |
| 60,001 to 80,000 MAD | 20% |
| 80,001 to 100,000 MAD | 30% |
| 100,001 to 180,000 MAD | 34% |
| Above 180,000 MAD | 37% |
The scale is progressive by band. Net taxable income of 90,000 MAD does not attract 30% across the whole amount: the first 40,000 stay exempt, the next 20,000 are taxed at 10%, the following 20,000 at 20%, and only the last 10,000 reach 30%.
What the 2026 Finance Law changed
The scale itself did not move on 1 January 2026. The six bands above come from article 8 of Finance Law no. 60-24 for budget year 2025, and the 2026 edition of the tax code carries them unchanged.
What did change is the dependant relief. Article 74-I now sets 600 dirhams per dependant per year, capped at 3,600 dirhams. Footnotes 467 and 468 of the code tie both amounts to article 7 of Finance Law no. 50-25 for budget year 2026. In the previous year the relief was 500 dirhams per person, capped at 3,000. An employee with four dependants therefore pays 400 dirhams less tax over the year.
Treat circulating tables with care: many still show 500 MAD per person. The figure in force, read in the code on 7 August 2026, is 600.
From gross salary to net taxable income
The scale is never applied to gross salary. Three deductions come first.
1. Costs inherent to the job (article 59-I). For an ordinary employee, the flat deduction is 35% of annual gross taxable income where that income does not exceed 78,000 dirhams, and 25% above it, with the deduction capped at 35,000 dirhams. The 35,000 cap sits in the sentence carrying the 25% rate, and it can never bite on the 35% band anyway: 35% of 78,000 is 27,300 dirhams.
Some occupations have their own rates, all capped at 35,000 dirhams: 45% for journalists, editors, press photographers and newspaper directors, commercial travellers and representatives, and flight crew in commercial aviation; 40% for merchant-navy and sea-fishing crew; 35% for miners, night-shift newspaper printworkers and performing artists; 25% for casino and club staff.
2. Employee social contributions. Article 59-II makes deductible the withholdings borne to build up a pension, which covers the CNSS long-term branch. Article 59-III adds contributions to Moroccan social-welfare bodies and employee social-security contributions for short-term benefits. In practice: the employee CNSS share and AMO (Assurance maladie obligatoire, the compulsory health insurance) leave the taxable salary. Rates are set out in the guide to CNSS contribution rates.
3. Other deductions under article 59, notably the employee share of group insurance premiums covering sickness, maternity, disability and death, and repayments on a loan taken to buy social housing used as a main residence, provided the employer withholds and pays the instalments directly to the credit institution.
Dependant relief
Article 74-II defines who counts as a dependant: the spouse; the taxpayer’s own children and children legally taken into the household, provided they have no annual global income above the exempt band of the scale and are no older than 27. The age condition falls away for a child with a disability preventing them from providing for themselves. A woman taxpayer gets the relief for her husband and children where they are legally her dependants.
A change in family circumstances during a month takes effect from the first month following the change. A birth in March opens the relief from April.
The relief is subtracted from the tax, not from income: 600 dirhams per person per year, that is 50 dirhams a month, for up to six people.
The shortcut: marginal rate and a fixed subtraction
Payroll does not recompute five bands every month. It applies the rate of the band reached, then subtracts a constant that corrects for the lower bands. Here is that constant, derived directly from the article 73-I scale.
| Monthly net taxable income | Rate | Monthly subtraction |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 3,333.33 MAD | 0% | 0 |
| 3,333.34 to 5,000 MAD | 10% | 333.33 MAD |
| 5,000.01 to 6,666.67 MAD | 20% | 833.33 MAD |
| 6,666.68 to 8,333.33 MAD | 30% | 1,500.00 MAD |
| 8,333.34 to 15,000 MAD | 34% | 1,833.33 MAD |
| Above 15,000 MAD | 37% | 2,283.33 MAD |
The monthly thresholds are the annual ones divided by twelve, and the annual subtractions are 4,000, 10,000, 18,000, 22,000 and 27,400 dirhams.
Worked example on 12,000 MAD gross
Private-sector employee, 12,000 MAD gross a month, no benefits in kind, two dependants.
Employee social contributions, with the CNSS ceiling of 6,000 MAD on the short-term and long-term branches:
- Long-term benefits, 3.96% on 6,000 = 237.60 MAD
- Short-term benefits, 0.52% on 6,000 = 31.20 MAD
- AMO, 2.26% on the full gross = 271.20 MAD
- Total withheld = 540.00 MAD
Professional expenses. Annual gross taxable income is 144,000 MAD, above 78,000, so the rate is 25%, capped at 35,000 MAD a year. 25% of 12,000 is 3,000, above the monthly cap of 2,916.67 MAD (35,000 divided by 12). The deduction taken is therefore 2,916.67 MAD.
Monthly net taxable income = 12,000 − 2,916.67 − 540.00 = 8,543.33 MAD, or 102,520 MAD over the year.
Tax before dependant relief. 8,543.33 MAD falls in the 34% band: (8,543.33 × 0.34) − 1,833.33 = 1,071.40 MAD. Annual check: (102,520 × 0.34) − 22,000 = 12,856.80 MAD, that is 1,071.40 a month.
Relief for two dependants: 2 × 600 = 1,200 MAD a year, that is 100 MAD a month.
Tax withheld at source = 971.40 MAD. Net salary = 12,000 − 540.00 − 971.40 = 10,488.60 MAD.
The effective tax rate works out at 8.1% of gross, a long way from the 34% marginal rate. That gap is the thing most people underestimate when they read the scale.
Why your payslip may show a different figure
- Seniority bonus and other bonuses enter gross taxable pay and shift the calculation.
- Benefits in cash or in kind are taxable, but article 59 specifies that the professional-expenses percentage applies to gross pay excluding those benefits. A company car therefore raises the tax faster than most people expect.
- CIMR or mutual-insurance membership adds deductible contributions, so less tax.
- Special regimes: Casablanca Finance City, industrial acceleration zones, IDMAJ contracts and foreign-employee status follow their own rules.
- Severance pay: article 57-7° exempts severance pay, voluntary-departure payments and dismissal damages, up to one million dirhams in total. See the guide to severance pay.
- Meal vouchers: exempt up to 40 dirhams per employee per working day, and no more than 20% of gross taxable salary.
What stays out of the tax base
Article 57 lists the exemptions. The ones that show up most often on a Moroccan payslip: allowances covering costs incurred in the job where they are evidenced (unless the employee already takes the flat deduction under articles 59-I-B and C), family allowances, sickness, accident and maternity daily allowances paid by social security, life annuities paid to victims of work accidents, maintenance payments, and the monthly gross internship allowance capped at 6,000 dirhams paid by a private company to a trainee registered with ANAPEC (the national employment agency), for twelve months.
Since the reform carried by the 2025 and 2026 finance laws, article 57-27° also exempts basic retirement pensions, including those paid by CNSS. The detail is in the guide to CNSS retirement.
Sources and verification
- Code général des impôts, 2026 edition, published by the Direction générale des impôts on the Ministry of Economy and Finance portal. Articles 57 (exemptions), 59 (deductions), 73-I (the scale) and 74 (dependant relief). Opened and read on 7 August 2026: CGI 2026, PDF.
- The DGI portal, tax.gov.ma, returned a 503 error on 7 August 2026; the text quoted above comes from the official PDF hosted by the ministry.
Every figure in this guide comes from the tax code, not from a copied table. If you find a discrepancy against a more recent text, write to us.
Further reading
- Gross to net salary calculator, to test your own figure
- Guide: CNSS contribution rates, the deductions that come out before tax
- Guide: understanding your Moroccan payslip, line by line
- Guide: CNSS retirement, age and pension, and the exemption for basic pensions
- Guide: severance pay calculation, and its capped exemption
- SMIG glossary entry and CNSS glossary entry
- Blog: Morocco salaries by sector in 2026
- Official source: tax.gov.ma