Income Tax (Exemption from Income Tax) (Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe) Notice, 2024
POTRAZ is exempt from income tax on all its receipts and accruals, backdated to 1 January 2017 — a full exemption, not a partial one.
The Minister of Finance has declared the receipts and accruals of the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe exempt from income tax, using the power in paragraph 2(j) of the Third Schedule to the Income Tax Act.
The notice is emphatic that the exemption is complete: it states for the avoidance of doubt that all receipts and accruals of POTRAZ are exempt. That covers the licence fees, levies and other income the Authority collects from telecommunications operators.
The exemption is backdated to 1 January 2017 — more than seven years before gazetting on 12 April 2024. In practice it regularises POTRAZ's tax position for a long stretch of past years rather than changing anything going forward.
One citation point: the notice refers to "the Income Tax [Chapter 23:06]" where it means the Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06], and it cites the Authority as established under "section 3 of the Postal Telecommunications Regulatory Authority Act [Chapter 12:05]", which is the Postal and Telecommunications Act.
What changed
- All receipts and accruals of POTRAZ are exempt from income tax
- The exemption takes effect from 1 January 2017 and is therefore retrospective
Who this affects
- the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe
- ZIMRA assessors handling POTRAZ assessments from 2017 onwards
- telecommunications licensees paying levies to POTRAZ
- Treasury officials accounting for regulator revenues
Plain-language summary — not legal advice. Always read the full instrument.