Guyana zero-rates fire extinguishers and smoke alarms and exempts sports gear from VAT from 2 February 2024

What changed in detail

The Fiscal Enactments (Amendment) Act 2024 (Act No. 2 of 2024) was assented to by the President and published in the Official Gazette (Extraordinary) of 6 February 2024. It amends the Income Tax Act, the Value-Added Tax Act Cap. 81:05, the Customs Act and other fiscal laws. Under section 1(3), the VAT and Customs amendments are deemed to have come into operation on 2 February 2024.

Section 8 amends Schedule I (zero-rated supplies) of the Value-Added Tax Act by inserting, after paragraph 18 and under a new “Miscellaneous” heading, paragraph 19: a supply of fire extinguishers and smoke alarms is zero-rated for the purposes of section 17.

Section 9 amends Schedule II (exempt supplies):

• Paragraph 5 gains a new subparagraph (c), which exempts “a supply of all other sports gear and equipment”.
• Paragraph 16 is replaced. It now exempts (i) supplies of mobile phones, and (ii) a supply of essential cell phone accessories, such as chargers, charging cables and headphones, along with phone components for repairs, as determined by the Commissioner-General.

The income tax and customs changes in the same Act are outside this record.

What it means

The zero rate for fire extinguishers and smoke alarms is in force, but paragraph 19 was later replaced by the Fiscal Enactments (Amendment) Act 2026, recorded at gy-fiscal-enactments-act-3-vat-2026. That replacement keeps fire extinguishers and smoke alarms zero-rated and adds security equipment, so these two items have been zero-rated continuously since 2 February 2024, not only since 2026.

Mobile phones were already exempt under the old paragraph 16; the 2024 substitution matters mainly for accessories and repair parts. The sports-gear and phone-accessory items are exemptions, not zero rates, so suppliers charge no VAT but cannot recover the input VAT attributable to them.