Lesotho income tax rates
Lesotho taxes resident individuals under a two-rate structure — Second Schedule (section 9(1)) to the Income Tax Act 1993 — plus a non-refundable personal tax credit under section 73 of the same Act, which is deducted from the tax otherwise payable. The bracket boundary and the credit are monetary amounts that the Minister of Finance re-sets almost every year by regulation under section 212(1)(c). The individual year of assessment runs 1 April to 31 March; employment income is collected through PAYE, which employers must remit to Revenue Services Lesotho by the 15th of the following month.
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-04-01 |
| Official source | Legal Notice No. 24 of 2026, Income Tax (Amendment of Monetary Amounts) Regulations 2026 (Lesotho Government Gazette Vol. 71, Friday 27th March 2026, No. 25, p. 579), made by Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane, Minister responsible for finance and development planning, pursuant to section 212(1)(c) of the Income Tax Act 1993: para 1 'shall come into operation on the 1st April, 2026'; para 3 'Section 73 of the Principal Law is amended by deleting the amount "M11,640.00"; and substituting the amount "M12,240.00"'; para 4 'The second schedule to the Principal Law is amended by deleting the amount "M74,040.00"; and substituting the amount "M77,760.00"'; para 5 repeals the 2025 regulations |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
HOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS — the credit, not a zero band, is what makes low earners tax-free. Every loti of chargeable income is taxed: 20% on the first M77,760 a year (M6,480 a month) and 30% on the excess. The M12,240 a year (M1,020 a month) personal tax credit is then subtracted from the tax computed. Because 20% of M61,200 is exactly M12,240, the effective tax-free point is M61,200 a year / M5,100 a month — RSL's Guide on Taxation of Employment Income 26-27 states it plainly: 'Employees who earn a gross salary of M5,100.00 and below per month, will not pay any tax on their income, but those who earn above M5,100.00 will be taxed for every Loti of such amount.' Worked example from the same guide: on M10,000 a month, M6,480 at 20% = M1,296, plus M3,520 at 30% = M1,056, total M2,352, less the M1,020 credit = M1,332 payable. WHAT CHANGED ON 1 APRIL 2026: the bracket boundary rose from M74,040 to M77,760 a year (+5.02%) and the credit from M11,640 to M12,240 a year (+5.15%). This is the inflation-indexation the Minister flagged in the 2026/27 budget speech of 18 February 2026 — 'The tax credit and thresholds will be adjusted accordingly to partially offset the effects of inflation, protect lower and middle-income earner from bracket creep' — and it is the ONLY personal tax change enacted for 2026/27. BACKDATING: none. Unlike some neighbours, the regulations commence on the first day of the year of assessment, 1 April, and were gazetted five days earlier on 27 March 2026. WHAT THE REGULATIONS CANNOT DO: section 212(1)(c) only lets the Minister amend MONETARY AMOUNTS. The 20% and 30% rates themselves are in the Second Schedule and can only be changed by Act. RATE PROVENANCE — a gap to be honest about: the consolidated Income Tax Act that RSL hosts (updated only to 1 April 2012) still shows the Second Schedule as '22% on the first M40,368, 35% over M40,368', annotated as substituted by sec. 31(a) of Act No. 10 of 1996 and amended by Act No. 17 of 2008 and Regulations LN No. 61 of 2009. The amending Act that took the rates from 22%/35% to 20%/30% could NOT be located on any reachable official source. The 20%/30% rates are nonetheless confirmed twice over by RSL itself: the Tax Rates page ('Two marginal rates are applicable when calculating PIT. 20% and 30%') and the Guide on Taxation of Employment Income 26-27 ('Taxable income is taxed in accordance with a progressive two-rate structure of 20% and 30%'). Do not read rates off the 2012 consolidation. NOT IN THESE BRACKETS: fringe benefit tax is charged on the employer at 40% of the taxable amount; withholding tax on payments to resident contractors is 5%, non-resident contractors 10%, and non-resident technical services 7.5% (South Africa only); additional tax for late filing or payment runs at 22% per twelve-month period. ACCESS: the gazette PDF above is an IMAGE-ONLY SCAN — pdftotext and PyMuPDF return zero characters and it must be rendered to images and read visually; budget for that in any automated watcher. www.rsl.org.ls refuses roughly half of all HTTPS connections and needs retries. RSL's Legal Notices index at /legal-notices does not list LN 24 of 2026 at all (its newest entry is the Labour Act 2024) and every 'Download' button on that index has an empty href — the only working path to the 2026 regulations is the Income Tax topic page at https://www.rsl.org.ls/income-tax.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2018-04-01 | structured | Legal Notice No. 26 of 2018, Income Tax (Amendment of Moneta |
| 2025-04-01 | structured | Income Tax (Amendment of Monetary Amounts) Regulations 2025 |
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/income-tax
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/income-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/ls/income-taxOther Lesotho series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate