What changed
Hungary — VAT: firewood drops from 27% to 5% on 15 September, and it is now in the gazette
Act XLVIII of 2026 adds two new rows to Part I of Annex 3 of the VAT Act: firewood in logs, billets, twigs or faggots (CN 4401 11 and 4401 12), and sawdust, wood waste, pellets and briquettes for heating (CN 4401 31 and 4401 39). Parliament adopted it on 28 August 2026 and it was published in Magyar Közlöny 2026/122 on 1 September. The Act’s own commencement clause reads “Ez a törvény 2026. szeptember 15-én lép hatályba” — this Act enters into force on 15 September 2026.
What it means. Last week this was a bill with a date and no gazette, which is the state in which a measure most often quietly slips. It did not. Anyone selling firewood or wood pellets into Hungary has about a week to reconfigure, and the CN codes matter more than the product names — the relief is drawn by tariff heading, not by how a seller describes the goods.
Hungary — VAT: prescription-only medicines move from 5% to a zero rate
A second Hungarian Act, XL of 2026, published in Magyar Közlöny 2026/112 on 13 August, creates a new Annex 3/B in the VAT Act carrying a zero rate and puts two lines in it: “Kizárólag orvosi rendelvényhez kötött gyógyszerek” (medicines available only on prescription) and “Humán gyógyászati célú magisztrális készítmények” (magistral preparations for human medicinal use). It applies from 1 September 2026, so it is already in force. Over-the-counter medicines and veterinary or cosmetic magistral preparations stay where they were.
What it means. An EU member state zero-rating a whole category of medicines is a significant step, and this one arrived without being trailed. The scope line is the one to read carefully: the zero rate follows the prescription requirement, not the product, so the same molecule can sit at 0% and at 27% depending on how it is dispensed.
Brazil — CBS/IBS: a window that is open right now decides how Simples Nacional companies pay through 2027
Resolutions CGSN No. 190 and No. 191, both of 12 August 2026, fold CBS and IBS into the Simples Nacional rules and open an election window from 1 to 30 September 2026. In it, a company chooses between collecting CBS and IBS inside the single unified Simples payment, or collecting them separately under the regular regime. Companies joining Simples Nacional from January 2027 file in the same window. Whatever is chosen takes effect on 1 January 2027 and can be cancelled up to 30 November 2026.
What it means. This is the rare item with a deadline inside the month it is published in. The choice is not administrative: the hybrid model puts CBS and IBS on the regular regime’s credit mechanics, which matters most to Simples companies selling B2B to buyers who want recoverable tax. The 30 November escape hatch is the reason not to panic, and the 30 September date is the reason not to wait.
Fiji — a new 5% Tourism Services Tax, separate from VAT, live since 1 September
Fiji’s 2026-2027 National Budget introduced a Tourism Services Tax at 5% on licensed tourism operators with annual turnover above FJD 2 million. The Revenue and Customs Service’s own budget summary states it “will be effective from 01 September 2026”. It sits alongside VAT rather than replacing it and has to be shown separately on invoices and receipts; FRCS has said bookings made before 1 September fall outside the charge even where the stay happens later.
What it means. A separate line on the invoice is the part that breaks systems — this is not a rate change to an existing tax but a second tax on the same transaction, which many booking and PMS stacks model badly. The pre-1-September booking carve-out also means the trigger is the booking date, not the service date, which is the opposite of the usual time-of-supply instinct.
Türkiye — reporting: the duty moves from platforms that sell to sites that merely carry the listing
Tax Procedure Law General Communiqué Serial No. 595, in Resmî Gazete No. 33361 of 5 September 2026, amends Communiqué No. 538 and takes effect on publication. It adds access providers, content providers, hosting providers (yer sağlayıcılar) and social network providers to the class of persons who can be put under a continuous reporting duty, and widens the covered transactions from purchase and sale to purchase, sale, rental, listings and advertising. Hosting and social network providers that publish such listings must report monthly the internet addresses used, the TCKN/YKN/VKN of the persons served, and the listing details of transactions carried out on their behalf.
What it means. The trigger moves from the transaction to the listing. A platform that intermediates a sale already holds identity data because it had to settle money; a site that only publishes a classified ad often holds an email and a phone number and nothing that maps to a tax number. The obligation therefore implies collecting identity at listing time, not just reporting at month end. Note also that this is a Tax Procedure Law reporting duty — it does not make the platform liable for tax on the underlying sale.
Uganda — e-invoicing: a notice published in August 2026 says the duty began in July 2025
A URA public notice, first published 10 August 2026, requires businesses in twelve named sectors to issue invoices and receipts through EFRIS, in addition to the existing obligation on all VAT-registered taxpayers. The effective date the notice recites is 1 July 2025 — thirteen months before publication. Businesses in those sectors below UGX 10,000,000 turnover, and taxpayers with rental income below UGX 2,820,000, may use EFRIS voluntarily; passenger land transport and non-resident digital service providers are excluded from this phase. The notice cites no legal instrument.
What it means. Several trackers reported this as a new mandate. It is not presented as one — the authority is publishing in 2026 a duty it says began in 2025, and the exposure is therefore the thirteen months already elapsed rather than the work of starting now. The income tax limb sharpens it: expenses unsupported by an e-invoice from a supplier required to use EFRIS are not deductible, so the risk lands on the customer’s return too. Get the underlying instrument before relying on the 2025 date; the notice does not supply it.
United States — California: the rate rises, and Los Angeles County’s tax code changes with it
CDTFA Special Notice L-1037 publishes voter-approved district changes effective 1 October 2026. The countywide County of Los Angeles rate goes from 9.750% to 10.250% — and its tax code changes from B47 to D29. Perris moves from 7.750% to 8.750%, and Red Bluff from 7.500% to 8.500% under a new code E05, with consequential rates for cities inside Los Angeles County. Georgia changes eleven county rates on the same date.
What it means. The code reassignment is the part that breaks systems, and it fails more quietly than a wrong rate. An engine that resolves California district tax by code rather than by address does not return a stale 9.750% on 1 October — it returns no match, or falls through to a default, because B47 no longer describes the countywide district. Diffing the rate column of the September spreadsheet is not enough; the code column has to be diffed too.
In short
- Peru — e-invoicing. SUNAT Resolution 000048-2026, in force since 1 August 2026, pulls two more document types into the electronic issuance system: the authorised document for airport services to passengers, and the documento de atribución used by consortia and joint ventures that do not keep separate accounts. A further tranche of the same resolution starts on 1 November 2026. Record
- Peru — compliance. SUNAT extended its discretion not to penalise certain RVIE and RCE infractions under the SIRE electronic register regime, published 31 August 2026. Record
- United Arab Emirates — correction. FTA Directive on Tax Transactions No. 3 of 2026 was issued on 14 July 2026, not 17 July as this feed previously recorded. The document’s signature block reads “Issued on 29 Muharram 1448H Corresponding to 14 July 2026”; 17 July is the date the FTA portal published it. The substantive rule on converting digital-currency consideration into dirhams is unchanged. Record
- Taiwan — scope. A Ministry of Finance order of 3 September 2026 (Tai-Tsai-Shui-Tzu No. 11504611390) states that business entities’ sales of virtual assets and stablecoins, as defined in subparagraphs 1 and 6 of Article 3 of the Virtual Asset Services Act, are not within the scope of business tax. Outside the scope is not the same as exempt, and the order does not address the fees and commissions charged alongside such sales. Record
- United States — Georgia. Eleven jurisdictions change their combined rate from 1 October 2026: Charlton 8, Dougherty 9, Heard 8, Houston 8, Jenkins 9, Monroe 9, Richmond 9, Tattnall 9, Towns 7, Wilcox 9, and Fulton (S. Downtown) 3.9. The bulletin carries no publication date. Record
- Zambia — e-invoicing. An updated ZRA Smart Invoice VSDC API Specification requires customer phone number and email address on the Sales Information service when a reward campaign is active, and returns new reward fields in the response. It arrives as a silently-replaced PDF with no version number and no publication date — the only dating evidence is the file path. Record
Themes this week
Two of the three 1 October promises still have no law, three weeks out. The United Kingdom’s cut of VAT on domestic electricity from 5% to 0% was announced on 21 July. As of 7 September, HMRC’s own rate guidance still lists domestic electricity at 5%, and that page was last updated on 10 July — eleven days before the announcement. No statutory instrument amending Schedule 7A has been laid. Barbados is in the same position: its Revenue Authority still publishes “January 1, 2016 – Present day: $200,000” for the registration threshold, and no Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill is before the House, the most recent on record dating from 2023. Both measures were announced by governments that control their legislatures; neither has the instrument that would make the date real.
Hungary is now using VAT rates as direct cost-of-living policy, twice in one month. Act XL’s preamble on medicines and Act XLVIII’s on firewood — which says in terms that heating with firewood is often the only option available to poorer households — are both framed as social measures rather than tax design. Two rate cuts in four weeks, one to zero, is a fast cadence for a VAT system.
Deadlines are landing inside the reporting window rather than after it. Brazil’s Simples Nacional election closes on 30 September, Hungary’s firewood rate starts on 15 September, and Fiji’s Tourism Services Tax has already commenced. Nine of this issue’s thirteen changes were already in force on the day it was published, Hungary’s firewood rate starts on 15 September, and two more — both United States rate changes — land on 1 October.
Three of this issue’s changes were published without a usable announcement date, and one was backdated. Georgia’s rate bulletin carries no publication date at all; California’s notice is dated only “August 2026”, with no day; Zambia’s specification has neither a version number nor a date, so the only evidence of when it changed is the path it was uploaded to. Uganda’s goes further and recites an effective date thirteen months before the notice announcing it. A change-detection process keyed on “what was announced this week” sees none of these four. Watching the content of a document against its effective-date column is the only method that catches them, which is a materially more expensive thing to build than an RSS reader.
Sources
Every change above was confirmed against the issuing authority’s own document — the Magyar Közlöny gazette PDFs for both Hungarian Acts, Receita Federal for Brazil, the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service budget summary, SUNAT’s published resolution for Peru, the Federal Tax Authority’s own PDF for the UAE correction, the Resmî Gazete for Türkiye, the Executive Yuan Gazette for Taiwan, the URA’s own notice for Uganda, CDTFA Special Notice L-1037 and the Georgia Department of Revenue bulletin for the United States, and the ZRA’s published specification for Zambia. Advisory and aggregator reporting was used only to find the leads, never as the source of a fact.
A note on this issue’s scope. It was first published with seven changes. Six more — Türkiye, Taiwan, Uganda, the two United States rate changes and Zambia — were added afterwards, because two of the seventeen country batches behind this issue failed partway through the run and never reported, leaving 23 jurisdictions from Turkmenistan to Zimbabwe unexamined while the run recorded itself as complete. Those batches were re-run and their findings deduplicated against everything already published; six of the sixteen candidates they returned turned out to be changes this feed had already carried in earlier weeks, and are not repeated here. The six above are what survived that check and independent re-verification against the source documents.
Country detail sits in the Hungary and Brazil guides, and you can check a trading partner’s VAT number with the validators.