The Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz) has urged the government to urgently issue a corrective statutory instrument to align the law with the Treasury’s recent clarification on the newly introduced 15% digital services withholding tax.
The 15% digital services withholding tax, which took effect on January 1, 2026, applies to payments made from Zimbabwe to offshore digital platforms.
Under the 2026 National Budget and Finance Act 7 of 2025, the tax covers e-hailing and platform-based service fees, online advertising subscriptions, digital streaming and online content services, as well as satellite-based and other cross-border digital access services.
Confusion, however, arose over whether the tax also applied to purchases of goods from offshore e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba, Amazon, eBay and Be Forward.
In response, the Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion ministry stated on January 7, 2026, clarifying that online purchases of goods are not liable for the new
tax.
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At the same time, Treasury broadened the scope of the tax to include all offshore payments for imported services — regardless of the payment channel — provided such payments are processed through regulated intermediaries in Zimbabwe.
Speaking to NewsDay Business, Emcoz said in light of these changes, the government should issue the required corrective instrument, as Finance Act 7 of 2025 was already in force as law.
“As Emcoz, we note the clarification. We, therefore, expect and look forward to the issuance of the required corrective instrument because the Finance Act is already alive and cannot be corrected through the clarification statement only,” Emcoz said.
Emcoz pointed to Section 44(2) and (3) of Finance Act 7 of 2025, which repeals and replaces Section 13A of the Value Added Tax Act. The amended section deems payments for goods and services supplied from outside Zimbabwe as locally supplied and subject to a digital withholding services tax.
So while the Treasury statement clarifies that “the online purchases of goods are not liable to the new tax, by law, they still are.
The confederation said the corrective instrument was urgent and called for all collections made in the interim to be ring-fenced and refunded by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority
once the legal correction is effected.
Emcoz warned that without intervention, the tax would result in double taxation on imported goods, pushing up costs for businesses and consumers.
“This effectively implied double taxation on the broad array of imports for which importers were already paying other forms of tax. This had the effect of raising costs to both business operators and individuals importing goods and essential digital services by 15%,” it said.
Popular local price-tracking platform Zimpricecheck has noted that the digital services tax risks becoming even more unpopular than the Intermediated Money Transfer Tax.
