Forty-five changes across thirty-two jurisdictions this week, from a sweep that attempted all 203 and reached 198 of them.
The headline is a document that finally exists. On 8 September HMRC published Revenue and Customs Brief 10 (2026) and a Tax Information and Impact Note setting out the domestic electricity VAT cut the Prime Minister announced on 21 July. Two facts in it were not in the announcement. The zero rate runs 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 — six months, not permanently. And it applies to Great Britain only: Northern Ireland stays at 5%. A supplier billing households on both sides of the Irish Sea now has two rates on one product.
The order itself still has not been made. Until a Treasury Order amending Schedules 7A and 8 of VATA 1994 appears, the 1 October date rests on a policy paper, which is why this entry is still recorded as proposed rather than enacted.
One entry here post-dates the rest. Poland’s VAT Act amendment (druk 2838) was recorded on 12 September as still awaiting its second and third readings, which is what the Sejm’s own record said that day. Checking it again while writing this issue showed the second reading took place on 15 September and the third on 18 September, where it passed by 393 votes of 411 cast. Rather than publish the stale position and correct it next week, both are recorded: the original entry as captured, and a superseding one for the passage. The bill is still not law — it goes to the Senate and then the President, so it stays proposed. Passing one chamber is not enactment, and that distinction has caught this scan out before.
Themes this week
Two member states started transposing ViDA, on the same date. Malta’s Budget Measures Implementation Act 2026 amends the VAT Act to bring Article 2 of Directive (EU) 2025/516 into force on 1 January 2027 — the deemed-supplier extension, the call-off-stock phase-out and the OSS EUR 10,000 threshold clarification. Poland’s Council of Ministers backed a draft doing the same job for its e-commerce and OSS/IOSS rules on 2 September, targeting the same day. Malta’s is law and Poland’s is a draft, and that gap is the thing to watch: a directive deadline produces a cluster of national instruments that arrive at very different stages of certainty.
1 October is doing a lot of work. Beyond the UK: Cyprus’s zero rate on meat and fish expires on 30 September and the previous rate returns the next day. Georgia restricts access to its service.rs.ge portal for taxpayers who have not confirmed their tax invoices. The Maldives extends GST to non-resident suppliers of inbound-tourism and booking-agency services. The Isle of Man reclassifies cider and sparkling wine in travellers’ duty-free allowances. Senegal’s SENTAX platform became mandatory for large taxpayers on 1 September and paper filings are no longer accepted. Five of these are configuration changes with a hard date and no grace period.
Digital-services VAT keeps widening, and it is now reaching into deduction. Sierra Leone’s Finance Act adds a registration trigger for non-resident digital-service suppliers “whether or not the person has a physical presence in Sierra Leone”, and — the less common move — denies input-tax deduction on acquisitions from suppliers with no physical presence or registered office. Mauritius repealed the requirement for foreign digital suppliers to appoint a local tax representative. The Maldives brought inbound tourism services into charge. Registration thresholds are no longer the only lever; the deduction side is being used too.
Finance acts keep yielding limbs nobody routed. Four of this week’s changes come from a mechanical read of Sierra Leone’s Finance Act 2026, an instrument in force since 1 January from which earlier passes had published only two provisions. Two more come from enumerating the VAT-amending sections of Mauritius’s Finance Act. One more is a further exempt-schedule limb of Egypt’s Law 149 of 2026. None of these were announced this week; they were found by reading the whole amending part of an act rather than the part the coverage mentioned. Where an entry records a change already in force, the date in effectiveDate is the commencement, not the discovery.
The plumbing under e-invoicing is changing as much as the mandates. Croatia now requires fiscalisation certificates from qualified trust service providers on the EU trusted list under the eIDAS Regulation, from 1 January 2027, with existing certificates usable until they expire. Ecuador created a registration category for e-invoicing software providers and requires the provider’s tax number on every invoice. Singapore’s InvoiceNow requirement makes adoption a condition of voluntary GST registration. Chile issued a new set of technical validations for electronic tax documents. The mandate is increasingly not the hard part; the identity and software supply chain around it is.
A note on what this issue does not contain
This scan attempted all 203 jurisdictions in the universe and reached 198. Five could not be reached from either of the two network paths available: Mexico, Pakistan, Iran, Kosovo and Sao Tome and Principe. Every URL tried and its status is recorded in the feed.
One of those matters more than the others. Mexico’s Paquete Economico 2027 — the Ley de Ingresos and the Miscelanea Fiscal — was delivered to Congress on 8 September, inside this window, and independent reporting describes IVA measures in it. Every official Mexican host refused connections during this scan and the figures in secondary coverage disagree with each other, so nothing about it is recorded as fact here. It is the first thing the next issue should resolve.