Botswana suspends charging VAT on medical services, two days before it was due to start

What changed in detail

The wording matters: BURS suspended the charging of VAT on medical services. It did not make medical services exempt. A BURS public notice dated 30 July 2026 — two days before private medical services were due to become taxable on 1 August 2026 under the Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act No. 16 of 2025) — tells private healthcare providers, medical aid schemes and the public that “the charging of Value Added Tax (VAT) on medical services is suspended to allow consultation with key stakeholders and the general public.”

The notice covers medical services only. It says nothing about, and does not suspend, the other limbs of Act No. 16 of 2025 that commenced alongside it: prescription drugs remain moved from exempt to zero-rated, the extended input-VAT claim period stands, and reverse charging is unaffected. The notice gives no end date, and no statutory instrument has been found giving the suspension legal effect — the only source is BURS’s own announcement.

This corrects the earlier entry, which reported private medical services as taxable from 1 August 2026 without qualification.

What it means

Stop charging VAT on private medical services and reverse anything charged on or after 1 August 2026 — but keep every other change from Act No. 16 of 2025 configured exactly as it was: prescription drugs stay zero-rated (not exempt, which would block input-tax recovery), the extended input-VAT claim period stands, and reverse-charge treatment is unaffected. A blanket rollback that also reverts the drug zero-rating or the claim period would be over-correcting a notice that never touched them.

Because this is a suspension by administrative notice rather than an enactment, treat it as provisional: there is no statutory instrument to point to, no stated end date, and BURS could resume charging on its own timeline once consultation concludes.