Mauritius cuts the window for claiming missed input VAT from 36 months to 24

What changed in detail

Act No. 14 of 2026, the Finance Act 2026, was passed by the National Assembly on 31 July 2026, assented to on 12 August and gazetted on 13 August 2026. Section 25(j) amends the Value Added Tax Act by deleting the words “36 months” in section 21(6) and replacing them with “24 months”.

Section 21(6) is the provision that rescues input tax claimed late. In its pre-amendment form it read: “Where credit for any input tax has not been taken in the taxable period in which it ought to have been taken, a registered person may take such credit within a period of 36 months of the date the input tax ought to have been taken.” The amendment leaves the mechanism intact and shortens the period to 24 months.

Commencement is governed by section 28 of the Act, which enumerates the provisions with deferred start dates — 1 October 2026 for section 25(b), (c), (e), (g), (h), (i) and (r)(xiii); 1 January 2027 for section 25(p) and (q); and several individual deemed dates. Section 25(j) is not among them. Section 1 of the Act is “Short title” only, so there is no general commencement clause and anything unlisted takes effect on publication. The shortened window therefore applied from 13 August 2026.

The Act contains no transitional provision for input tax that was recoverable under the old 36-month rule on the day before publication.

What it means

This is the quietest provision in an Act whose headline items were e-books and digital services, and it is probably the most expensive one in it.

The practical effect is retrospective in substance even though the amendment is not drafted that way: a credit that was still claimable on 12 August 2026 because it fell inside 36 months could be outside 24 months on 13 August, and nothing in the Act preserves it. Any Mauritian VAT registration carrying a backlog of unposted or disputed input tax has a reconciliation to do, and the band between 24 and 36 months is the part to look at first.

It is also a reminder that a finance act is not its press release. This change was not trailed in the Budget coverage, does not appear in the reporting that surrounded the Act, and is visible only by reading section 25 against section 28 — which is exactly where a one-line amendment to a long-standing time limit tends to sit.