Sri Lanka postpones the revised VAT tax invoice format to 1 October 2026
This page records one dated change. For the rules in Sri Lanka as they stand today, see the Sri Lanka guide →
- Jurisdiction
- Sri Lanka
- Tax
- VAT
- Change type
- Invoice rules
- Status
- In force
- Impact
- Plan ahead
- Announced
- 6 August 2026
- Effective
- 1 October 2026
- Authority
- Inland Revenue Department, Sri Lanka
- Systems
- Invoicing, ERP, Tax engine
- Verified
- Fetched from official source · high confidence
Every VAT-registered person in Sri Lanka that issues tax invoices.
Update Sri Lanka VAT invoicing/billing systems to the revised tax invoice format and specifications by 1 October 2026 (not the earlier 1 July 2026 date).
InvoicingERPTax engine
Gazette Extraordinary No. 2500/106 of 6 August 2026 (published/signed by the Commissioner General of Inland Revenue) amends Gazette Extraordinary No. 2481/22 of 27 March 2026, which prescribed the revised VAT tax invoice format and specifications. The amendment postpones the mandatory effective date of the revised tax invoice format from 1 July 2026 to 1 October 2026; all other matters in the original notice are unchanged. This corrects the effective date on the previously published corpus entry for Sri Lanka's VAT invoice format (which had cited 1 July 2026 / an earlier date).
What changed in detail
Gazette Extraordinary No. 2500/106, dated Thursday 6 August 2026 and signed at the Inland Revenue Department, Colombo 02, on 5 August 2026, amends the notice published in Gazette Extraordinary No. 2481/22 of 27 March 2026 — the notice prescribing the format and specifications of the tax invoice to be issued by every registered person.
It makes one change. The effective date of “July 01, 2026” is amended to “October 01, 2026”. Paragraph 2 provides that all other matters shall remain unchanged, so the prescribed format and specifications themselves are untouched; only the date on which they become mandatory moves.
The amendment is made by Rukdevi Perpetua Himali Fernando, Commissioner General of Inland Revenue, under Section 20 of the Value Added Tax Act, No. 14 of 2002, and is published in Part I : Section (I) — General, Government Notifications. The gazette carries no transitional provision and names no exempt category of registered person.
The earlier record of the invoice-format requirement on this site still carries the superseded date: Sri Lanka makes a new VAT tax invoice format binding from 1 July 2026. The format described there is unchanged; its commencement is what this gazette moves.
What it means
A three-month deferral of a format change is a reprieve on a systems project, not a cancellation. The specification did not move, so work already done against Gazette 2481/22 stands and nothing has to be rebuilt — the only thing that shifted is the cut-over.
The risk is the one deferrals create. Teams that had built to 1 July mostly went live on it, and the amendment moves the date the format becomes mandatory rather than forbidding it earlier. So from 1 October the live question is not whether your own invoices comply but whether your suppliers’ do, because a purchase invoice is the document an input credit rests on.
If you deferred, read paragraph 2 as closing the door: all other matters remain unchanged, which leaves 1 October 2026 as the date with no further concession attached to it.
Proof
BY virtue of the powers vested in me under Section 20 of the Value Added Tax Act, No. 14 of 2002, I, Rukdevi Perpetua Himali Fernando, Commissioner General of Inland Revenue, hereby amend the Notice published in Gazette Extraordinary No. 2481/22 dated March 27, 2026, which prescribes the format and specifications of the Tax Invoice to be issued by every registerd person, as follows:- 1. The effective date of "July 01, 2026", is hereby amended as "October 01, 2026"; 2. All other matters shall remain unchanged.
Source snapshot of the official page. Open full size ↗Archived from the official distribution · Gazette Extraordinary No. 2500/106, Thursday 6 August 2026, Part I : Section (I) — General, Government Notifications · www.ird.gov.lk