How North Macedonia’s Inheritance Tax Policy Penalises Childless Heirs

Liljana Matic, a 70-year-old who lives in North Macedonia’s capital, was surprised when she received a tax assessment from the City of Skopje at the end of August for inheriting the apartment where she had lived for decades with her husband, who is now deceased.

She had expected not to pay anything to transfer the apartment into her name, as they had lived there together from the day they received it as socially owned housing, back in 1986. After Macedonia gained independence from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and the country transitioned into capitalism, her husband was able to purchase the apartment in 1995. It was registered in his name in the Land Registry the same year.

Immediate family members are generally exempt from inheritance tax, so Liljana Matic had no reason to assume she would be treated differently from anyone else.

She was not even aware that, under the Law on Inheritance, adopted three decades ago, in 1996, she was classified as a second-order heir. The reason the legislation placed her in this category was that she and her husband had no offspring.