Cyprus keeps its zero VAT rate on bread, milk, eggs, meat, vegetables and other basics to 30 September 2024 (K.D.P. 231/2024)

What changed in detail

Cyprus’s Council of Ministers issued the Value Added Tax (Amendment of the Fifth and Sixth Schedules) (No. 2) Order 2024, K.D.P. 231/2024, published in Official Gazette Annex III(I) No. 5880 on 28 June 2024, two days before the previous order ran out.

It re-enacts the goods list of K.D.P. 138/2024 for a further three months. From 1 July 2024 to 30 September 2024, a 0% rate applies to:

• bread, milk, eggs, baby food, coffee and sugar;
• infant and adult nappies and women’s hygiene products;
• the fresh, chilled or frozen meat and edible offal and the fresh or chilled vegetables in the CN headings first listed in K.D.P. 360/2023.

Unlike K.D.P. 138/2024, a single date window, set in paragraph 4, covers every item.

What it means

This order is spent. It ended on 30 September 2024 and was not renewed in time: from 1 October to 3 November 2024 all these goods returned to their reduced rates.

The next link is K.D.P. 349/2024, which brought back a zero rate from 4 November 2024 on a much narrower list. Bread, eggs, coffee, sugar and meat did not return to 0% under that order. Invoices issued during the October 2024 gap should carry the ordinary reduced rate.