Antigua and Barbuda raises the ABST rate from 15% to 17%

What changed in detail

The Revenue (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2023 (No. 13 of 2023) passed the House of Representatives on 19 December and the Senate on 22 December 2023, received assent on 29 December 2023 and was published the same day in the Official Gazette (Vol. XLIII No. 74).

Section 2 amends section 8 of the Antigua and Barbuda Sales Tax Act 2006:

• in section 8(3)(d), the figure 15 is replaced by 17, so the standard ABST rate rises from 15% to 17%;
• in section 8(3)(b), the figure 14 is replaced by 17, aligning the separate 14% rate at 17%.

The same section narrows Schedule 4 item 9: the exemption for passenger transport by land, sea or air within Antigua and Barbuda no longer covers transportation by tour operators. Schedule 4 item 28 is repealed.

The Act has no commencement clause. The Inland Revenue Department applied the new rate from 1 January 2024.

Outside ABST, the same Act adds an additional 10% excise tax on the importation and sale of controlled liquor, medicinal cannabis products and tobacco products, and amends the Airport Administration Charge Act 2012.

What it means

The 17% rate has applied since the start of 2024 and remains the statutory standard ABST rate in section 8(3)(d). That does not mean 17% has applied on every day since: the government has used short temporary ABST reductions, so check the Inland Revenue Department’s current notices for any reduced period before assuming 17% on a given date.

Two points are easy to miss. First, the rise was not limited to the headline rate: the 14% rate in section 8(3)(b) moved to 17% too, so suppliers who had relied on the lower figure were caught by the same change. Second, the same Act took transportation by tour operators out of the passenger-transport exemption, so those fares became taxable rather than exempt. The Act gives no date for that change, and it should not be assumed to share the 1 January 2024 date: confirm with the Inland Revenue Department when it applied ABST to tour operators.

Because the Act itself names no start date, the 1 January 2024 date rests on the Inland Revenue Department’s application of the law rather than on the statute.