Eswatini VAT rate
Value added tax standard rate. VAT is charged under section 3 of the Value Added Tax Act, 2011 (Act No. 12 of 2011) on every taxable supply in Eswatini by a taxable person and on every import of goods or services other than an exempt import, and is administered by the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS). The rate itself is not fixed in the Act — section 24(3) provides that 'the rate of tax shall be as specified in the VAT Regulations'.
| Current value | 15 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2018-08-01 |
| Official source | Eswatini Revenue Service — 'Eswatini VAT' (official ERS taxpayer page): 'VAT is an indirect tax that is levied on the consumption of goods and services in Eswatini, and is also levied on the importation of goods and services into Eswatini. It was introduced on 1 April 2012 to replace Sales Tax ... it is levied on most goods and services at the rate of 15%. The legal basis is the VAT Act 2011 supplemented by VAT 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
WHERE THE RATE ACTUALLY LIVES — read this before pointing a watcher at the Act: section 24(3) of the Value Added Tax Act, 2011 (Act No. 12 of 2011, assented by King Mswati III on 26 October 2011) says only that 'the rate of tax shall be as specified in the VAT Regulations'. The 15% figure is therefore NOT in the statute; it is set by subsidiary legislation made by the Minister for Finance under section 84. The Value Added Tax Regulations, 2012 that ERS publishes (https://www.ers.org.sz:8000/documents/EswatiniTax-VAT_Regulations.pdf) do NOT themselves contain a rate either — their Part II covers adjustments, alternative tax periods and input-tax credit, and regulation 4 deals only with 'Variation of consideration on a change of the rate of Value Added Tax'. So the operative rate instrument is a separate rate notice that could not be retrieved from any official host at confirmation. COMMENCEMENT AND RATE HISTORY: VAT commenced on 1 April 2012 (ERS's own wording above — beware secondary sources that say 1 July 2011, which is the year of the Act, not of commencement) at 14%, replacing Sales Tax under the repealed Sales Tax Act, 1983. The rate was raised from 14% to 15% with effect from 1 August 2018, announced by the Minister of Finance in the Budget Speech of 1 March 2018 and driven largely by South Africa's own move to 15% (Eswatini's biggest trading partner and CMA peg anchor). EFFECTIVE-DATE CAVEAT: the 15% LEVEL is confirmed by ERS itself; the 1 August 2018 DATE could not be confirmed from a government source in this pass — the gazetted rate notice was not locatable, the old Swaziland Revenue Authority page that indexed a 'VAT (Rate) (Amendment) Regulation 2018' (www.sra.org.sz/legalandpolicy/pageview.php?id=98) now 301-redirects to a dead ERS path, and the CBE Quarterly Review for March 2019 discusses the 2019 Budget's proposed 15% VAT on electricity but does not restate the 2018 rate change. Treat 2018-08-01 as high-confidence but not gazette-verified. RECENT AMENDMENTS TO THE SCHEDULES (not the rate): the Value Added Tax Act (Amendment of Schedules) Notice, 2025 — Legal Notice No. 130 of 2025, Eswatini Government Gazette Extraordinary No. 109 of Wednesday 17 December 2025, made under section 85 and read as one with Legal Notice No. 270 of 2022, in force on the date of publication — deleted clause 1(k) of Part A (exempt supply of services), rewrote the exempt water clause to 'the supply of tap water and waste water services for domestic consumption', and added a new exemption for investment-grade precious metals (refined gold of at least 99.5% or silver of at least 99.9% purity, in bar/ingot/bullion form, supplied to a financial institution licensed under the Financial Institutions Act, 2005, approved by the Central Bank of Eswatini). ERS misfiles this document as 'LEGAL NOTICE 30 OF 2025' in its URL; the instrument itself is numbered 130. Earlier: the Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2022 rewrote sections 19, 20, 21, 28, 33 (new 33bis special assessment), 47 (new 47bis refund on indirect exports), 50 and 55 — it did NOT touch the rate. Zero-rated supplies sit in the Second Schedule; exempt supplies in the First Schedule. ACCESS PROBLEMS: every ers.org.sz host serves an incomplete TLS chain, so standard fetchers fail with 'unable to verify the first certificate' — the site is reachable only if the chain check is relaxed. ERS legislation PDFs are served from a non-standard port (https://www.ers.org.sz:8000/documents/...). The VAT Act 2011 PDF is text-extractable, but the 2022 Amendment Act and Legal Notice 130 of 2025 are image-only scans with no text layer.
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/vat
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/sz/vatOther Eswatini series: policy interest rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates