Pakistan VAT rate
Pakistan's VAT-equivalent. The FEDERAL sales tax on goods levied under section 3(1) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, administered by the Federal Board of Revenue. Services are NOT in the federal net — each province taxes services separately under its own law and its own rate schedule (see notes).
| Current value | 18 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2023-02-15 |
| Official source | Sales Tax Act, 1990, section 3(1) — "there shall be charged, levied and paid a tax known as sales tax at the rate of [eighteen] per cent of the value of (a) taxable supplies made ... by a registered person ... and (b) goods imported into Pakistan"; FBR consolidated text amended up to 30-06-2026 (footnote 142: "Substituted for seventeen vide Finance (Supplementary) Act, 2023") |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
The 18% standard rate was first imposed by S.R.O. 179(I)/2023 dated 14 February 2023 (Revenue Division, under s.3(2)(b)), which enhanced the rate on goods falling under s.3(1) from seventeen to eighteen per cent with immediate effect (15 Feb 2023) — https://download1.fbr.gov.pk/SROs/20232151124337684SRO179-2023.pdf — and was then written into s.3(1) itself by the Finance (Supplementary) Act, 2023. Unchanged by the Finance Act 2026. Beyond the 18% standard rate: a 25% higher rate applies to the luxury/import items listed in the Twelfth Schedule (s.3(2)(b) notifications); a FURTHER TAX of 4% is charged under s.3(1A) on supplies to persons without a sales-tax registration number or who are not active taxpayers; goods in the Third Schedule are taxed on printed RETAIL PRICE; the Tenth Schedule prescribes a separate collection mode (s.3(1B)); zero-rating is under s.4 and the Fifth Schedule; exemptions under s.13 and the Sixth Schedule. PROVINCIAL SERVICES SPLIT — the trap for anyone reading '18%' as Pakistan's single VAT rate: under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, sales tax on SERVICES is a provincial subject. Services are taxed by the Sindh Revenue Board (Sindh Sales Tax on Services Act, 2011), the Punjab Revenue Authority (Punjab Sales Tax on Services Act, 2012), the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority (KP Finance Act, 2013) and the Balochistan Revenue Authority (Balochistan Sales Tax on Services Act, 2015), each with its own rate schedule, its own registration and its own return — and by the FBR only for the Islamabad Capital Territory, under the Islamabad Capital Territory (Tax on Services) Ordinance, 2001. This series carries ONLY the federal goods rate; the provincial services rates are not served here and were not verified against the four authorities at confirmation (figures circulating in secondary sources — Sindh 15% with 19.5% on telecom, Punjab 16%, KP 15%, Balochistan 15%, ICT 15% — are DO NOT SERVE AS FACT). Verify at srb.gos.pk, pra.punjab.gov.pk, kpra.gov.pk and bra.gob.pk. ACCESS NOTE: FBR PDFs are served from download1.fbr.gov.pk; they fetch cleanly but are text-layer PDFs that generic HTML-to-markdown fetchers return as binary garbage.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/pk/vat
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/pk/vat/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/pk/vatOther Pakistan series: policy interest rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates