Tanzania deems the digital marketplace operator the supplier of electronic services

What changed in detail

Section 94 of the Finance Act, 2026 (Act No. 2 of 2026), published in Special Gazette No. 8 Vol. 107 of 30 June 2026 and in operation from 1 July 2026, amends section 51 of the Value Added Tax Act (CAP. 148).

A new subsection (2) provides that where an electronic service is supplied to an unregistered person in Mainland Tanzania by a digital intermediary through online intermediation services or any other digital marketplace, the operator of that service or marketplace is deemed, for the purposes of the Act, to be the supplier of the service. A new subsection (3) defines “digital intermediary” as an electronic interface — including a website, internet portal, application, online store or digital marketplace — that allows recipients and persons offering services through the interface to enter contact resulting in a sale through it.

The existing subsection (2) is renumbered as subsection (4), and a new paragraph (k) is added to its list of electronic services: “any other service of a similar nature delivered through internet or a telecommunications network.”

What it means

Liability moves from thousands of individual sellers to the platform, which is the same design the EU, the UK and a growing list of African jurisdictions have converged on. The operational consequence is specific: the deeming rule turns on whether the customer is registered, not on whether the seller is. A marketplace serving Tanzanian buyers therefore needs a per-customer registration-status determination at transaction time, not a per-seller onboarding check.

The new paragraph (k) is worth reading separately. A catch-all for “any other service of a similar nature delivered through internet or a telecommunications network” makes the electronic services list open-ended, so a service you concluded was outside the old enumerated list should be re-tested rather than assumed to be still outside.