Mauritius raises excise and brings marketplaces into digital-services VAT
- Jurisdiction
- Mauritius
- Tax
- VAT
- Change type
- Rate change
- Status
- In force
- Announced
- 19 June 2026
- Effective
- 20 June 2026
- Authority
- Mauritius National Assembly / Ministry of Finance
- Verified
- Fetched from official source · high confidence
Tobacco and hard liquor (excise up 10%) and sugary products (levy from 12 to 15 cents per gram) from 20 June 2026. The Budget also trailed VAT relief for e-books, common salt and online marketplaces; the Finance Act 2026 zero-rated e-books rather than exempting them, brought marketplace commission into scope, and did not enact anything on common salt.
In the Budget 2026-2027 (presented 19 June 2026), excise duty on tobacco and hard liquor rose 10% and the sugar levy rose from 12 to 15 cents per gram, both effective 20 June 2026; electronic books were exempted from VAT and common salt zero-rated, with online marketplaces and digital platforms brought into the scope of VAT on digital and electronic services. The 15% VAT rate is unchanged.
What changed in detail
In the Budget 2026-2027 (19 June 2026), excise on tobacco and hard liquor rose 10% and the sugar levy from 12 to 15 cents per gram, both from 20 June 2026. The 15% VAT rate is unchanged. Those excise and levy changes took effect as stated and remain current.
The Budget also trailed three VAT measures — relief for electronic books, zero-rating for common salt, and bringing online marketplaces into the scope of VAT on digital services. Those were Budget announcements, not enacted law, and two of the three did not survive into the Finance Act 2026 in the form announced:
- Electronic books were zero-rated, not exempted. Section 25(s) of the Finance Act 2026 (Act No. 14 of 2026, gazetted 13 August 2026) inserted them into the Fifth Schedule — the zero-rating schedule — which preserves input-VAT recovery in a way an exemption would not. See the record.
- Common salt was not enacted at all. The word does not appear anywhere in the Act.
- Online-marketplace commission was enacted, via a new item 8 in Part III of the Tenth Schedule. See the record.
Proof
3 E XCISE D UTY 3.1 Alcoholic Products The rates of excise duty on alcoholic products will be increased by 10%, except for beer, wine and liqueur, with effect from 20 June 2026. As regards liqueur, the rate of excise duty will be increased and aligned with that of rum.
Source snapshot of the official page. Open full size ↗