Egypt rewrites six items of the VAT-exempt list and repeals two serials of the schedule table

What changed in detail

Law No. 149 of 2026, amending the VAT Law issued by Law No. 67 of 2016, was published in Egypt’s Official Gazette, issue No. 30 bis (a), on 28 July 2026. Article Five provides that it applies from the day following publication — 29 July 2026.

Article Two replaces the text of items 19, 20, 28, 32, 35 and 36 of the list of goods and services exempt from VAT annexed to the VAT Law. As replaced:

• 19 — butane gas (butagas).
• 20 — natural materials, including the products of mines and quarries in their natural state, excluding crude oil and natural gas.
• 28 — sale and lease of vacant land, agricultural land and residential buildings and units, and sale and lease of non-residential buildings and units, except the lease of buildings and units taken as an independent seat for managing an activity. Seats of religious, charitable, social, educational and health activities are excepted from that carve-out.
• 32 — wheelchairs, artificial body organs, hearing aids for the deaf, other devices worn, carried or implanted to compensate a deficiency, disability or impairment and their production inputs, dialysis machines and consumables including artificial kidney filters, infant incubators, sera, vaccines, blood and its derivatives, blood-collection bags, and family-planning means.
• 35 — the banking services of the Post Office Savings Fund and the financial services provided by the National Postal Authority.
• 36 — non-banking financial services subject to the supervision and oversight of the Financial Regulatory Authority or the Central Bank.

Article Four separately repeals serials 8 and 10 of item “First” of the schedule of goods and services annexed to the VAT Law.

:::note Two readings corrected against the gazette text, 21 September 2026 The frozen entry says items 8 and 10 were repealed from “the same schedule” — the exempt list. Article Four repeals them from item “First” of the جدول السلع والخدمات, the schedule-tax table, a different annex from the قائمة (list) of exempt goods and services that Article Two amends. Both are visible in the exhibits above.

Two readings are also widened here against the Arabic: item 35 covers the National Postal Authority’s financial services as well as the Post Office Savings Fund’s banking services, and item 36 covers services supervised by the Central Bank as well as by the Financial Regulatory Authority, which is the only body the frozen entry names. :::

What it means

Most of the six items restate treatment that already existed; the work is in the two that changed shape. Item 28 turns on how a property is used rather than how it is classified — a unit taken as an independent seat for running an activity falls outside the exemption even in a residential building — so lease documentation and actual occupancy become the evidence that decides the treatment, not the title deed.

Item 36 now turns on which regulator supervises the service. A non-bank financial service is exempt if the Financial Regulatory Authority or the Central Bank oversees it, which is a different question from whether the provider holds a banking licence.

The repeal in Article Four is the part most likely to be missed, precisely because it lives in another annex. A tax engine configured against the exemption list alone will not see it.