Tonga income tax rates
Progressive rate scale applied to the GROSS employment income of individuals (there are no deductions for employees), operated through PAYE withholding by the employer under the Income Tax Act 2007 and the governing Income Tax Order. Annual amounts in Tongan pa'anga.
| Current value | 5 entries — see the API for the full schedule |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2021-07-01 |
| Official source | Ministry of Revenue and Customs — 'PAYE', table 'New Tax Rate - 1st July 2021': $0-$12,000 0% (Tax Free); $12,001-$30,000 10%; $30,001-$50,000 15%; $50,001-$70,000 20%; $70,001 and over 25%. Identical table published at MORC 'Individual Employee'. Statutory basis Income Tax Act 2007, s.5 |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
CORRECTION TO A WIDESPREAD AGGREGATOR CLAIM: several tax-summary sites assert that Tonga has 'zero income tax' and therefore no personal brackets. That is FALSE — MORC publishes the schedule above and operates PAYE withholding on it. The tax-free threshold of TOP 12,000 is what those sites appear to have generalised. As with the corporate rate, the figures are NOT in the Income Tax Act 2007: s.5(1) delegates the rates to a Ministerial Order made with Cabinet approval, so the revenue authority's published table is the citable primary statement of the current rates. NO DEDUCTIONS: MORC states plainly that 'Employees have no allowable deductions... expenses are not taken into account as tax rates are imposed on the gross income' — the bands apply to GROSS employment income, which is basic salary or wage plus bonuses, allowances and benefits in kind. Benefits in kind are valued under the First Schedule to the Act (e.g. a wholly private-use employer motor vehicle is valued at 20% of the employer's acquisition cost less any employee contribution; employer loans are benchmarked to 'the National Reserve Bank of Tonga weighted average lending rate at the commencement of the fiscal year'). The bands are NOMINAL and NOT indexed to inflation — they have not moved since 1 July 2021, so the 7.1% inflation recorded in June 2026 is producing real fiscal drag. Tonga's tax year is a FISCAL year ending 30 June, not a calendar year, which is why every rate change takes effect on 1 July. Employer obligations: monthly withholding return (Form 7), annual withholding certificate to each employee within 14 days of year end (Form 4), annual reconciliation (Form 8); over-withheld employees claim a refund on Form 9. Access problems as for the corporate-tax series: revenue.gov.to has an incomplete TLS chain, its /public-notice path returns 'Access denied', and its legislation index does not carry the post-2017 Income Tax Orders, so the underlying Order text could not be retrieved from an official source — the MORC rate tables are the best available official statement and both the PAYE and Individual Employee pages agree.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-07-01 | structured | MORC — 'Individual Employee', table 'Old Tax Rate - Up to Ju |
| 2017-07-01 | structured | MORC — 'Individual Employee', table 'Tax Rate - July 2017': |
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/to/income-tax
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/to/income-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/to/income-taxOther Tonga series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate