Tanzania Withholding tax rates
Tanzania Withholding tax rates: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 12 Aug 2026.
The withholding taxes Tanzania (mainland) levies on payments to non-residents - dividends, interest, royalties and service fees - under the Income Tax Act, 2004 (Cap 332) and its First Schedule, at domestic statutory rates before any double-tax agreement relief. Administered by the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA); withholding on payments to non-residents is a final tax.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Income Tax Act [CAP. 332 R.E. 2019] (United Republic of Tanzania), published by the Ministry of Finance; First Schedule paragraph 4, made under section 4(6): “Income tax to be withheld from payments under Division II of Part VII shall be withheld at the following rates” — dividends of a corporation listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange five percent, of any other corporation ten percent; interest or rent paid to a non-resident withholdee ten percent; other payments fifteen percent; service fees fifteen percent for a non-resident. Royalties are brought in by section 82(1)(a) (“pays a dividend, interest, natural resource payment, rent or royalty... at the rate provided for in paragraph 4(b) of the First Schedule”) and fall to the “other payments” limb |
| Last verified | 2026-08-12 |
| Verification | secondary — Corroborated, but the primary instrument was NOT read (usually the publishing host blocks automated access). Every rate is now quoted from the operative words of the Income Tax Act [CAP. 332 R.E. 2019] First Schedule paragraph 4, in the Ministry of Finance's own published text (mof.go.tz; the Tax Revenue Appeals Board mirrors the same document at trab.go.tz). The earlier note said the TRA website was unreachable and no operative words were quoted from the administering authority — the first half is still true, but the Act was found on a different official host. Residual uncertainty is currency, not content: R.E. 2019 carries marginal notes to Act 4 of 2018, no later official consolidation was locatable, and Finance Acts after 2019 could in principle have moved a rate. PwC (reviewed 14 January 2026) reports the identical five rates, so statute and practitioner agree across that gap. That is corroboration of currency, not proof, so confidence stays secondary. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THERE IS NO SINGLE WITHHOLDING TAX RATE, WHICH IS WHY value IS NULL. Tanzania rates each head separately (10% and 15%, with a 5% listed-company dividend concession). A caller wanting a number must name which payment type; read withholding_rates rather than expecting a headline figure. ALL RATES ARE DOMESTIC STATUTORY RATES, BEFORE TREATY RELIEF. Tanzania's double-tax agreements can reduce them - the domestic rate applies unless the treaty rate is lower - and applying a treaty rate is a legal determination rather than a lookup, so we do NOT serve treaty rates. NO SERIES EFFECTIVE DATE IS ASSERTED: the sources state current rates without commencement dates, and we do not supply dates from memory. These are mainland rates; Zanzibar administers its own collections under broadly the same Act. Withholding on payments to non-residents is FINAL; the parallel withholdings on payments to residents (e.g. 5% service fees for residents, creditable) are advance taxes on residents and are not served here. Tanzania also withholds on non-resident rent, insurance premiums and transport charges outside the four heads served. RETRIEVAL NOTES FOR RE-VERIFICATION. tra.go.tz returns a malformed response header ("protocol violation") and fails from every vantage tried. tanzlii.org refuses connections from some hosts and returns HTTP 403 on its /akn/ act paths to a full browser request and to a third vantage alike, so its block is server-side rather than local. The Act is retrievable from mof.go.tz, and the same document is mirrored by the Tax Revenue Appeals Board at trab.go.tz — use those, not the revenue authority.
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/withholding-tax
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/withholding-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/tz/withholding-taxOther Tanzania series: Bank of Tanzania central bank rate · VAT standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Private-sector minimum wage (lowest sectoral rate) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Statutory late-payment interest · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Algeria · all 34