Finance Bill H.B. 14, 2025

This is the Finance Bill — H.B. 14 of 2025 — not law. It would give effect to the fiscal measures announced in the National Budget Statement of 27 November 2025, amending the Finance Act, Income Tax Act, Value Added Tax Act, Customs and Excise Act and others. Almost every measure below is expressed to take effect from 1 January 2026, and none of it applies unless the Bill is passed.

The change that touches everyone is VAT: the general rate would rise from fifteen per cent to fifteen comma five per cent.

The change that touches everyone holding US dollars is the automated financial transactions tax on nostro account withdrawals. For an individual, or two or more individuals jointly, a withdrawal below US$500 would be taxed at zero; above US$500 but not above US$1 000 in a calendar month at two per cent; and above US$1 000 in a calendar month at three per cent. For a company or other corporate entity the bands are ten times higher: nil below US$5 000, two per cent between US$5 000 and US$10 000 a month, and three per cent above US$10 000 a month. The intermediated money transfer tax would be recalculated at zero comma zero one five per cent on every unit of local currency transacted, with a proviso for single transactions at or above the equivalent of US$500 000.

Two taxes return or arrive. The non-residents' tax on interest, repealed in 2009, would be re-imposed at fifteen per cent of each dollar of interest withheld. A presumptive rental income tax would be charged at twenty-five per cent of each dollar of rent — a substantial new burden on landlords.

Mining carries much of the rest. Export taxes would be set at five per cent on unbeneficiated chrome, ten per cent on antimony, and ten per cent on lithium ore and lithium concentrate with zero per cent on lithium sulphate — a deliberate gradient rewarding processing before export. Unbeneficiated platinum would be taxed at three per cent where the supplier has built an approved plant in Zimbabwe capable of producing platinum group concentrates, applied retrospectively for the twelve months ending 31 December 2025. The levy on gross value would double from one per cent to two per cent and would extend to coal, which is how the social responsibility levy on coal production is imposed. The Bill also limits the carrying forward of assessed tax losses by mining companies, addresses deductibility of mining capital expenditure, and tackles transfer pricing by international mining houses.

Gaming would be taxed at twenty per cent of a gaming operator's gross monthly takings, with a further twenty-five per cent withheld on punters' gross winnings.

For companies operating across borders, the permanent establishment threshold would tighten sharply: a fixed place of business would create one after ninety days in aggregate in any twelve-month period, and furnishing services including consultancy through employees would do the same after more than ninety days. A Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax would be enhanced, with the Minimum Rate set at fifteen per cent. A special capital gains tax on the transfer of shares would be charged at twenty per cent of the transaction value, payable in United States dollars or foreign currency equivalent.

On the digital economy, the taxable threshold for electronic commerce operators would be removed altogether, and a digital services withholding tax would be collected through intermediaries — an intermediary who fails to withhold or pay becoming personally liable for the tax plus a further fifteen per cent, which the Commissioner may waive where there was no intent to evade.

Reliefs also feature: a credit for each employee of a business or knowledge process outsourcing service, a credit for certain sports expenditure by corporate taxpayers, film production capital expenditure provisions, deductibility of IMTT, and an income tax exemption for Infralink. Administration tightens elsewhere — monthly submission of the ITF 15 by employers, migration of certain presumptive taxpayers to self-assessment, taxation of dividends accruing to the banking sector, a strategic reserve levy, and payment of statutory fees through electronic payment systems, devices or platforms.

This summary carries the rates from the Bill's own operative text. The Bill runs to well over a hundred and eighty thousand characters and was not read end to end, so measures described here from the explanatory memorandum without a rate — the employment and sports credits, mining loss and capital expenditure rules, transfer pricing and banking dividends — should be checked in the Bill before being relied on.