Before you start

A determination of whether you are fiscally domiciled in Algeria under article 3
The double-taxation treaty between Algeria and your home country, where one exists
Your contract, showing gross, net and the transferable split
Advice from an adviser who handles both tax and exchange control

Step-by-step

1
Establish your fiscal domicile under article 3
The tests turn on having a home or principal place of stay in Algeria, carrying on a professional activity here, or having the centre of your principal interests here. We have not been able to source a clean day-count threshold in the Algerian code and have not invented one — take Algerian advice on your specific facts.
OnlineWho: You
2
Let payroll withhold if you are an ordinary employee
IRG on salaries is withheld at source and remitted by the employer. Most foreign employees on an Algerian contract have no separate filing for employment income.
Via employerWho: Your employer
3
Check the treaty position with your home country
Algeria has double-taxation treaties with a number of countries. Whether one covers you, and how it allocates employment income and any foreign income, is the first question for anyone who is not cleanly resident in one place only.
OnlineWho: You
4
Understand what your home country still wants from you
Leaving does not end a home country's taxing rights automatically. Assignees on rotation, in particular, frequently remain resident somewhere else and need to model both systems at once rather than assuming Algeria has taken over.
OnlineWho: You
5
Settle the currency question before the tax question
For most people here the more consequential number is not the tax rate but the contractually transferable share of salary, because that determines how much of your after-tax pay can ever leave Algeria. Optimising tax on money that is stuck is not optimisation.
Via employerWho: You
6
Use an adviser who covers both systems
Algerian tax advisers and exchange-control specialists are not always the same people, and an answer that ignores the other half is incomplete. Ask both questions in the same meeting and be suspicious of an adviser who is comfortable with only one.
In personWho: You

Documents you’ll need

Employment contract, including the salary split
Payslips and the annual employer statement
Carte de résident
Evidence of foreign income and foreign tax paid
Treaty documentation, where a treaty is relied on

Things most newcomers don’t know

In Algeria the currency answer matters more than the tax answer, and people optimise the wrong one.

IRG rates are what they are and withholding handles them. The number that determines what you actually leave Algeria with is the contractually agreed transferable share of salary under the Banque d'Algérie transfer mechanism. A package structured for tax efficiency that leaves most of the pay in non-transferable dinars is worse than a simpler package with a better split. Settle the split first.

Source: Banque d'Algérie; CIDTA

Fiscal domicile under article 3 does not rest on a day count alone.

The Code des Impôts Directs frames domicile around having a home or principal place of stay in Algeria, carrying on a professional activity here, or having the centre of your principal interests here. Anyone testing themselves purely against a number of days is applying a rule from somewhere else. We could not establish a clean statutory day threshold in the Algerian code and have not stated one — this is a question for an Algerian adviser on your specific facts.

Source: CIDTA art. 3

Rotation workers are the group most likely to get this wrong in both directions.

A great deal of foreign employment in Algeria is rotational — weeks on, weeks off — which makes both the Algerian domicile question and the home-country residence question genuinely arguable rather than obvious. People assume either that rotation means they are taxable nowhere, or that Algerian withholding settles everything. Neither is safe, and the answer depends on the treaty and on facts that vary person to person.

Source: community-reported; CIDTA

We have not given you Algerian rates or thresholds, and that is deliberate.

Algerian bracket structures and thresholds are set by the Code des Impôts Directs and amended by successive finance laws, and the secondary sources restating them are frequently out of date. Rather than publish a figure we could not confirm as current against the Direction Générale des Impôts, we have pointed you at the source. Apply the same test to any guide that gives you a confident Algerian tax number.

Source: editorial note