Tanzania VAT standard rate
Tanzania VAT standard rate is 18 percent, in force since 1 Jul 2009. Last checked against the official source on 3 Aug 2026.
Standard value-added tax rate, Mainland Tanzania.
| Current value | 18 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2009-07-01 |
| Official source | The Finance Act, 2009 (Act No. 14 of 2009), PART VIII - Amendment of the Value Added Tax Act (Cap. 148), s.23: 'The principal Act is amended in section 8 by deleting the word "twenty (20)" and substituting for it the word "eighteen".' The pre-amendment s.8 read 'VAT shall be charged at the rate of twenty (20) per centum of the taxable value'. Rate re-enacted unchanged by the Value Added Tax Act, 2014 (Cap. 148) from 2015-07-01; current administering authority Tanzania Revenue Authority. |
| Last verified | 2026-08-03 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
EFFECTIVE DATE CORRECTED 2026-08-03: was 2015-07-01, now 2009-07-01. 2015-07-01 is when the VAT Act 2014 commenced - i.e. when the instrument currently authorising the rate took over - NOT when the 18% rate began. Dating the value to the instrument rather than to the value produced a FALSE REFUSAL for any point-in-time question between 2009 and 2015, the same defect class fixed for Indonesia in commit 838ac67. WHAT IS ACTUALLY ESTABLISHED, stated precisely because the difference matters. The ENDPOINTS are verified from primary text: the Finance Act 2009 (Act No. 14 of 2009) Part VIII s.23 amended s.8 of Cap. 148 by 'deleting the word "twenty (20)" and substituting for it the word "eighteen"', and the Value Added Tax Act 2014 re-enacted 18% from 2015-07-01. CONTINUITY BETWEEN those endpoints is INFERRED, not proven: no Revised Edition of the old Cap. 148 postdating 2009 appears to exist, so no consolidated text shows s.8 reading 'eighteen' during the window, and the Finance Act sweep for 2010-2014 could only be partially reproduced on re-checking. Furthermore the old s.8(2) empowered the Minister to VARY the rate by order under the Provisional Collection of Taxes and Duties procedure; Government Notices for 2009-2015 have not been swept for such an order. A short-lived ministerial variation inside the window would therefore not have been detected. Treat 2009-07-01 as the start of the 18% era - that is well supported - but do not treat the intervening years as individually audited. OTHER RATES, unchanged by this correction: Finance Act 2025 introduced a reduced 16% rate (from 1 Sep 2025) for standard-rated supplies to VAT-unregistered individuals paying via approved bank or electronic channels. Zanzibar levies its own VAT (ZRA) at a 15% standard rate. Finance Act 2026 (1 July 2026) made no change to the standard rate; changes typically take effect 1 July via the annual Finance Act.
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/vat
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/tz/vatOther Tanzania series: Bank of Tanzania central bank rate · VAT registration threshold · Private-sector minimum wage (lowest sectoral rate) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory late-payment interest · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Algeria · all 34