Lithuania abolishes the 9% VAT rate, splitting it into 12%, 5% and 21% bands

What changed in detail

Law No. XV-287 of 17 June 2025, in force 1 January 2026, replaces Article 19(3) of Lithuania’s Law on VAT No. IX-751 and abolishes the 9% reduced rate entirely, splitting its former scope across three bands. Accommodation services, scheduled passenger transport and baggage, and admission to art and cultural institutions and events move from 9% to a new 12% reduced rate. Printed and electronic books and non-periodical information publications move from 9% to the 5% rate. Heat energy and hot water for residential heating, and firewood supplied to household consumers — formerly taxed at 9% — are not listed in either new band, so they fall to the 21% standard rate from 1 January 2026, as the State Tax Inspectorate’s explanatory letter No. RM-32963 confirms.

What it means

There is no “9% successor rate” to map to — the old band was dismantled and its contents redistributed across three different bands, two of them higher. Systems that hard-coded a single reduced rate for this bucket need re-mapping by category, not a single find-and-replace: get accommodation, transport and culture to 12%, books to 5%, and residential heating and firewood to 21%. The heating and firewood move is the one most likely to be missed, since nothing in the new law names a replacement rate for it — the rise to 21% follows only from what the law leaves out.