Forty-six changes this week.
Ten of them correct something this newsletter told you earlier. The first two below are the ones with a date attached that you could still act on wrongly, so they come first.
Washington DC’s 7% sales tax does not start on 1 October
We reported in August that the District of Columbia’s general sales and use tax would rise from 6% to 7% on 1 October 2026. It will not. D.C. Act 26-416, the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Emergency Act of 2026, effective 13 August, rewrites D.C. Code §§ 47-2002(a) and 47-2202(a) so the rate is 6.0% before 1 October 2027 and 7.0% from that date. The Office of Tax and Revenue carries the same notice.
What it means: Leave the DC rate at 6% on 1 October. The postponement currently rests on an emergency act, which lasts up to 90 days; its permanent twin was still in congressional review when we looked. That is the usual DC sequence and not a reason to doubt the date, but it is why we will re-check it before the emergency act lapses in November.
Moldova’s Transnistria VAT started on 1 September, not 1 August
We reported in July that VAT and excise on goods imported by Transnistrian-based operators would apply from 1 August, with fuels and electricity in the first wave. Government Decision No. 469 of 26 August 2026 sets the schedule, and it is different: from 1 September 2026 for alcohol, tobacco, perfume, jewellery, precious metals, vehicles and similar luxury goods; from 1 January 2027 for soft drinks, ores, base metals and petroleum products; and from 1 April 2027 for natural gas, electricity, telephones and computers.
What it means: Customs brokers and suppliers dealing with Transnistrian importers need the three-phase table, not the single date. Fuel and power come last, not first.
The other corrections
Six more entries are corrected this week, none of them a change to what you should be doing today except the Malaysian one:
- Malaysia — we had the approvals in P.U.(A) 303/2026 the wrong way round. The manufacturer is approved by the Director General, the goods by the Minister of Finance, and the manufacturer signs its own exemption certificate. It covers fertilizer and pesticide as well as animal feed.
- Hungary — only sawdust and wood waste compressed into pellets or briquettes moved to 5%. Loose sawdust stays at 27%.
- Peru — RS 000048-2026 was never in force on 1 August. It was postponed to 1 January 2027 the day before.
- Vietnam — foreign e-commerce platforms register voluntarily to use Vietnamese e-invoices under Decree 254/2026. We had said they must.
- Croatia and the Philippines — a gazette date (2 September, not 3) and a head-office rule attributed to the wrong regulation (RR 11-2025, not RR 26-2025). The Philippine 31 December 2026 deadline itself stands, and this week’s RMC 98-2026 restates it.
We also cite Lithuania’s import-VAT article correctly this time (Article 115¹⁷, not 115(17)), and Botswana’s non-resident remote-services rules now rest on the new VAT Act: S.I. 74 of 2026 was revoked on 1 July.
Bulgaria drafts mandatory B2B e-invoicing
Bulgaria’s Ministry of Finance put a draft amendment to the VAT Act out for consultation on 23 September. Suppliers established in Bulgaria would have to issue structured electronic invoices for domestic supplies to businesses and public bodies from 1 January 2028, and the same draft raises the VAT registration threshold from EUR 51,130 to EUR 75,000 from 1 January 2027. Comments close on 23 October.
What it means: This is a draft, not law. But it puts another EU member state on a dated course toward mandatory domestic e-invoicing ahead of the ViDA deadlines, and the threshold rise, if it survives, takes a band of small businesses out of VAT registration in fifteen months.
Germany wants cash registers and digital receipts from 2028
The Federal Cabinet adopted a bill on 23 September that would end the obligation to hand over paper receipts from 2028 (paper only on request) and require an electronic cash register for businesses with annual turnover of EUR 100,000 or more, exempting anyone with under EUR 12,000 a year in cash sales.
What it means: For point-of-sale vendors the digital-receipt default is the bigger change. The bill still has to pass the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
Austria’s parcel tax starts on Thursday
From 1 October 2026 Austria charges EUR 2 per parcel on domestic deliveries in the course of distance sales, payable by sellers whose Austrian distance sales exceeded EUR 100 million last year, with marketplaces liable under a deemed-supplier rule.
France abolishes the simplified VAT regime
From 1 January 2027 the régime simplifié d’imposition for VAT disappears. Businesses on it move to quarterly CA3 returns (monthly above EUR 1 million), and file a final CA12 for 2026 by 4 May 2027.
Themes this week
Most of this week’s new law did not arrive as news. Thirteen of the forty-five changes were in force or enacted months ago and surfaced only in consolidated legal text. Ireland’s Finance Act 2025 moved hotel rooms hired for events to the standard rate and cut the flat-rate farmers’ addition to 4.5%. Belgium moved hotels and campsites to 12% and plant-protection products to 21% in March, put heat pumps at 6% until 2030, and restored seven-year invoice retention retroactively to 2023. Lithuania abolished its 9% rate on 1 January. Sweden handed the Peppol role to Upphandlingsmyndigheten in July. None of these was announced loudly; all of them change a rate table or a retention rule.
Rates are moving up at the edges of the reduced bands. Poland’s Cabinet wants 23% on juice-containing soft drinks and energy drinks from 2027, up from 5% and 8%. Iceland’s budget moves bathing lagoons from 11% to 24% and cuts the VAT refund on residential building labour from 35% to 20%. Lithuania, having abolished its 9% rate, now has a member’s bill to restore it for residential heating.
Invoices are being tied to payment and identity, not just to the tax authority. Kenya will not pay a government supplier through IFMIS without a matching eTIMS invoice. Malaysia no longer accepts a passport number alone for a foreign individual buyer on a MyInvois e-invoice. The Philippines requires a permit to issue e-invoices and certification within six months of it. Italy, pulling the other way, gives businesses until the second year after receipt to record an invoice and deduct its VAT.
Several announced dates did not hold. Washington DC’s rate rise, Peru’s electronic-issuance resolution and Moldova’s first wave all moved after the date we first reported. In each case the instrument that moved it was already published when the earlier date was still circulating.