Lesotho VAT registration threshold

What this value means

PERIOD BASIS: a ROLLING twelve-month test, not a fiscal or calendar year — liability arises at the end of ANY 12-month period in which the taxable value of taxable supplies EXCEEDED M2,000,000 (exactly M2,000,000 does not trigger), with a forward-looking limb at the beginning of any 12-month period on reasonable-grounds expectation (s.17(1)(b)). The application window is FOURTEEN days from the end of the crossing period — among the shortest anywhere. The threshold amount is not in the Act: s.17(2) delegates it to ministerial Gazette notice, and the Minister may set SEPARATE thresholds for goods and for services (currently a single M2,000,000 for both, per the 2025 Regulations and RSL). Auctioneers and national/regional/local public authorities carrying on an enterprise must register regardless of turnover. Voluntary registration below the threshold is allowed, but since a 2020 legal opinion on s.17(1)(b) abuse RSL screens applicants hard (Commissioner's powers under s.17(8)-(11): eligibility scrutiny, effective-date control) to stop pre-revenue shells claiming input credits. NON-ESTABLISHED SUPPLIERS: no non-resident registration regime and no threshold relief — VAT on imported services is collected from the RECIPIENT: resident recipients of services supplied by non-resident providers self-account for output VAT under the reverse charge, with input credit only to the extent the services are used to make taxable supplies. VAT was introduced 1 July 2003 (Act 9 of 2001); standard rate 15%, reduced 10% (electricity/telecoms). IMPORTED DIGITAL SERVICES: no separate regime as of Aug 2026 — no vendor-collection or simplified registration for foreign digital platforms; B2C digital imports rest on the (rarely enforced) recipient reverse charge. Traps: (1) The threshold jumped M850,000 to M2,000,000 in 2025 — most references still print M850,000, and the original 2003 figure of M500,000 also still circulates; anything quoting 850k is pre-2025. (2) The commonly cited effective date is 25 April 2025 (practitioner guides); Senate scrutiny of the 2025 Regulations only concluded in March 2026 with a recommendation that they 'be allowed to come into operation' — the regulations were already being applied by RSL well before that, so do not treat the parliamentary date as the start date. (3) The 14-day application clock runs from the end of the crossing 12-month period, and taxable-person exposure runs from the crossing, not from registration. (4) s.17(2) allows split goods/services thresholds — check the current notice before assuming one number. (5) RSL's own VAT 101 guide (Aug 2025) misprints the amount as 'M 2000,000.00'; it means M2,000,000.00 per annum. (6) Registration now drags in e-invoicing: E-Invoicing Regulations (Legal Notice No. 25 of 2026) in force 1 April 2026, with mandatory adoption of approved EBS systems from 1 August 2026 — vendors below the threshold escape both VAT and the e-invoicing mandate.

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/vat-registration-threshold
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/vat-registration-threshold/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/ls/vat-registration-threshold

Other Lesotho series: CBL Rate (Central Bank of Lesotho policy rate) · VAT standard rate · Sectoral minimum wages (basic minimum wages by sector and category) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Company income tax rate (standard, non-manufacturing) · Withholding tax rates · Statutory late-payment interest · Personal income tax rates, threshold and credit · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Mali · Mauritius · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · all 34