Can I be personally liable for unpaid VAT of my Malta business?

Your personal liability for unpaid VAT genuinely depends significantly on the legal structure through which you operate your business, since if you operate as a sole trader, you and the business are legally the same person under Maltese law, meaning you would be personally and directly liable for any unpaid VAT obligations without any separation between your personal assets and the business's liabilities, whereas if you operate through a properly structured limited company under the Companies Act, Chapter 386 of the Laws of Malta, the company itself is generally the entity primarily liable for its VAT obligations as a separate legal person, providing you with a meaningful degree of personal liability protection in the ordinary course of business. That said, this protection through a limited company structure is not absolute in every circumstance, since directors can potentially face personal liability in specific situations involving genuine fraud, deliberate evasion, or certain circumstances of serious mismanagement connected to tax obligations, meaning simply operating through a limited company doesn't provide unlimited personal protection regardless of how the underlying VAT non-compliance actually arose. Given how significantly your personal liability exposure depends on your specific business structure and the circumstances of any VAT non-compliance, it would be worth consulting an accountant or lawyer to properly understand your current specific exposure and, if you're not currently operating through a limited company, whether restructuring might be worth considering for better liability protection going forward.