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Jamaica General Consumption Tax (GCT) standard rate

Jamaica General Consumption Tax (GCT) standard rate is 15 percent, in force since 1 Apr 2020, cited to Jamaica Information Service (Government of Jamaica). It was 16.5 percent before that. Last checked against the official source on 15 Oct 2026.

Official source: Jamaica Information Service (Government of Jamaica) · Last checked 2026-10-15 · source fingerprint

Jamaica has no VAT; the equivalent broad-based consumption tax is the General Consumption Tax levied under the General Consumption Tax Act (1991) and administered by Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ). This series carries the standard rate applied to standard-rated supplies of goods and services.

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Jamaica, as JSON

curl -i https://latamref.dev/v1/jm/vat
# 402 Payment Required + x402 quote; pay it with x402-fetch, x402-axios or any x402 client
# History:    https://latamref.dev/v1/jm/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: https://latamref.dev/provenance/jm/vat
Current value15 percent
In force from2020-04-01
Official sourceJamaica Information Service (Government of Jamaica) — 'Gov't Announces $18 Billion In Tax Cuts', 2020/21 Budget: 'Reduction of the General Consumption Tax (GCT) rate from 16.5 per cent to 15 per cent', effective 1 April 2020; corroborated by the Ministry of Finance & the Public Service Revenue Measures FY2026/27 (tabled 12 February 2026), which raises the tourism GCT rate 'to 15 per cent' — i.e. to the standard rate — effective 1 April 2027
Last verified2026-10-15
Verificationprimary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited.
Provenancesource fingerprint

What this value means

CORRECTION MADE: Tax Administration Jamaica's own public GCT page (https://www.jamaicatax.gov.jm/general-consumption-tax1/) is STALE — it still states the standard rate as 'sixteen and one-half percent (16.5%)'. That was the pre-2020 rate. The rate was cut to 15% effective 1 April 2020 in the 2020/21 Budget (announced revenue cost ~$13.96bn). The 15% figure is confirmed independently by the Ministry of Finance's FY2026/27 revenue measures, where the tourism-sector GCT rate is to be raised from 10% 'to 15 per cent' effective 1 April 2027 — a measure that only makes sense against a 15% standard rate. Do not serve 16.5%. OTHER GCT RATES (unchanged as of confirmation): 10% on specified tourism activities (rising to 15% on 1 April 2027); 25% on telephone services, telephone instruments and phone cards; zero-rated and exempt categories under the Act's schedules. FY2026/27 measures also extend GCT to imported digital services and intangibles (~$300m in Q4 FY2026/27, ~$4.2bn from FY2027/28). ACCESS PROBLEM: the statutory text at Laws of Jamaica (https://laws.moj.gov.jm/legislation/statutes/G/The%20General%20Consumption%20Tax%20Act.pdf, 4.1MB) is an image-only scanned PDF (CCITT fax-encoded) and is not machine-readable — the rate could not be quoted from the section text itself; the same is true of most laws.moj.gov.jm statute PDFs. Do not point an automated source-watcher at the Laws of Jamaica PDF or at the TAJ GCT page.

Earlier values

FromValueSource
2012-06-0116.5Jamaica Information Service — the 16.5% standard GCT rate…

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Other Jamaica series: policy interest rate · VAT registration threshold · National minimum wage (per 40-hour week) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (point-to-point, year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory interest on judgment debts · Personal income tax rates and threshold · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama · Paraguay · Peru · all 22