Belize VAT rate
Belize levies a VAT-type credit-invoice tax called the General Sales Tax under the General Sales Tax Act, Chapter 63 of the Substantive Laws of Belize (Revised Edition 2020). Section 8 charges GST on taxable importations and taxable supplies; section 9 fixes the rate. Administered by the Belize Tax Service Department (BTS) under the Ministry of Finance.
| Current value | 12.5 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2010-04-01 |
| Official source | General Sales Tax Act, Cap. 63, section 9(1) — 'The rate of GST applicable to a taxable supply or importation is, (a) if the supply or import is zero-rated under the First Schedule, the Second Schedule or the Third Schedule, 0%; or (b) in any other case, 12.5%.' The 12.5% figure was substituted by Act No. 15 of 2010 (marginal note to s.9). Statute text: official Belize Tax Service compilation of Cap. 63 |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
Read from the statute, not from a summary: s.9(1)(b) is the operative words. Section 9(2) lets the Minister vary the standard rate by Order in the Gazette subject to negative resolution, so the rate can move WITHOUT an amending Act — a Gazette Order is the thing to watch. The rate rose from 10% to 12.5% by Act No. 15 of 2010 (effective 1 April 2010); it has not moved since. Structure: standard 12.5%; 0% on zero-rated items in the First, Second and Third Schedules (staples — rice, beans, corn, flour, sugar, eggs, bread, tortilla, fresh meat — plus exports); exempt supplies sit in Schedule IV (financial services, residential rent, etc.). VERIFIED NOT CHANGED BY THE LATEST AMENDMENT: the General Sales Tax (Amendment) Act, No. 34 of 2024 (assented 9 Dec 2024, gazetted 14 Dec 2024, in force 1 Jan 2025) was read in full — it amends ss. 2, 14, 22, 33, 36, 37, 39, 90, 96 and Schedule IV and inserts s.36A, all to enable ELECTRONIC TAX INVOICING and to redefine 'residential premises' (now excluding hotel/holiday accommodation, i.e. narrowing the exemption). It does NOT touch section 9 and does NOT change the 12.5% rate. See also the GST (Amendment) Regulations 2025, S.I. No. 35 of 2025, which build out the e-invoicing regime. ACCESS PROBLEM for the source-watcher: bts.gov.bz serves the Cap. 63 PDF behind a wall that returns a near-empty 'Belize Tax Service' stub to non-browser clients (curl and fetch both got a 1.2 KB placeholder). The statutory text quoted above was read from the Internet Archive snapshot of that same official PDF (https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://bts.gov.bz/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Chap-63-General-Sales-Tax-Act.pdf). Amending Acts ARE directly fetchable from nationalassembly.gov.bz — point the watcher there. Note the BTS-hosted consolidation is the Revised Edition 2011 print; the current substantive revision is R.E. 2020, but s.9 is unchanged between them.
Get it programmatically
curl https://latamref.dev/v1/bz/vat
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://latamref.dev/v1/bz/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/bz/vatOther Belize series: policy interest rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates