What It Costs to Export from Tanzania: The Ten Charges, the Due Date and the Ninety-Day Rule

The Tanzania Revenue Authority’s export procedures page opens by stating that all exports are free of duty and taxes except for six items, and then lists ten. Both statements were true at different moments. Neither describes the position an exporter shipping in the 2026/27 year is actually pricing against.

This page is the charges file: every commodity that carries an export charge, the instrument that imposes it, the moment the money falls due, what lateness costs, and the two money rules that sit behind the shipment — VAT zero-rating and the ninety-day limit on proceeds. The permits and the customs paperwork are a separate file, and they are set out in Exporting from Tanzania: Permits and Documents the Carton Actually Needs.

Export is defined by the customs union, not by the tax statute

Section 2 of the East African Community Customs Management Act, 2004 defines export as “to take or cause to be taken out of the Partner States”. The definition is regional, which is why Tanzanian customs material speaks of partner states rather than of the country. Part V of that Act carries the procedure: section 70 on prohibited and restricted exports, section 73 on entry of cargo for export, section 74 on entry outwards, section 75 on loading, and section 82 on goods liable to export duty. Section 145 governs the licensing of the agents who transact that business with Customs.

Two Tanzanian statutes then decide whether money is payable. The Export Tax Act, Cap 196, charges the commodities listed in the Schedule made under its section 3. The Cashewnut Industry Act, Cap 203, charges raw cashew nuts separately, at section 18. No other export leaves Mainland Tanzania bearing an export charge.

What are the export levies in Tanzania?

The cashew charge is the one that sits outside the tax statute, and its destination changed recently. The Finance Act 2025 replaced the proviso to section 18(2) of Cap 203: from 1 July 2025, and for a period of four years, the Tanzania Revenue Authority deposits the whole amount of the export levy collected into the Cashewnut Board’s bank account at the Bank of Tanzania. The exporter still pays TRA; the money now runs to the Board rather than being split.

Why the published count says six and the list runs to ten

The count is not wrong so much as overtaken. The arithmetic:

• The Schedule to Cap 196 as revised in 2023 carried three items — raw hides and skins, wet blue leather, copper waste and scrap.
• The Finance Act 2024 added crude sunflower oil and sunflower seeds with effect from 1 July 2024. Five.
• The Finance Act 2025 added veneered sheets with effect from 1 July 2025. Six.
• Section 12 of the Finance Act 2026 added waste and scrap paper, the cakes and brans, and quartz sands with feldspar, with effect from 1 July 2026. Nine.

Six was the correct figure for the Schedule throughout the year to 30 June 2026. Adding raw cashew nuts, charged under a different Act, produces the ten entries actually listed. An exporter planning a 2026/27 shipment prices against nine plus one, not six.

When does export tax fall due, and what does lateness cost?

Section 3(1) of Cap 196 charges the tax on the export from Tanzania of the scheduled commodities. Section 3(3) sets the moment: the tax is due and becomes payable by the exporter prior to the removal of the commodity from Tanzania. Not on shipment, not on receipt of proceeds — before removal.

Section 5(1) prices delay. An amount unpaid on the due date attracts additional tax of 5% of that amount by way of penalty, and where it remains unpaid for more than thirty days the penalty increases by a further 5% for the second and every succeeding thirty-day period. The additional tax is deemed to be tax and is recovered as such.

Section 3(6) carries the single exemption written into the Act: the charging section does not apply to the export of raw hides and skin by an investor whose commercial undertaking in an export processing zone is the export of meat. Zone registration now runs through TISEZA under the Investment and Special Economic Zones Act, 2025.

One change of 2025 is easy to miss and matters for correspondence. Section 36 of the Finance Act 2025 deleted the definition of “Commissioner” in Cap 196 — formerly the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury — and substituted the Commissioner General appointed under the Tanzania Revenue Authority Act. Export tax is a TRA charge in law as well as in practice, and section 8 leaves the power to amend the Schedule with the Minister, by order gazetted and laid before the National Assembly within fifteen days.

What a non-citizen exporter may not do

Section 14A of the Business Licensing Act, Cap 101, inserted by the Finance Act 2025, bars a licensing authority from issuing a business licence to a non-citizen unless the business is one allowed for non-citizens, and empowers the Minister to specify the excluded activities by order. That order is the Business Licensing (Prohibition of Business Activities for Non-Citizens) Order, published as Government Notice No. 487A on 28 July 2025.

Two of its entries bear directly on an export operation: clearing and forwarding services, and on-farm crop purchasing operations. Brokerage or agency in business and real estate, wholesale and retail sale of goods, and small-scale mining also appear. Existing non-citizen licences run to expiry and are not renewed.

The consequence is structural rather than administrative. A foreign-owned exporter appoints a licensed clearing and forwarding agent because it cannot hold that licence itself, and sources through licensed Tanzanian buyers rather than buying at the farm gate. In minerals the restriction is sharper still: the Mining Commission states that holders of broker licences are not authorised to export minerals, and a mineral dealer’s licence requires the licence-holding company to be 25% Tanzanian-held, with up to 75% foreign.

Which regulator owns the cargo

The charge is decided by the Schedule. The permit is decided by the commodity, and it is issued by the regulator that owns that commodity rather than by the Revenue Authority. This is the lookup; the documentation workflow sits in the permits and documents file.

The supply is zero-rated, and the proof is what carries it

Section 55(1) of the Value Added Tax Act, Cap 148, zero-rates a supply of goods that are exported within the meaning given at section 2. That definition supplies its own evidence rule: in the absence of proof to the contrary, evidence of consignment or delivery of the goods to an address outside the United Republic, or evidence of delivery to the owner, charterer or operator of a ship or aircraft engaged in international transport for the purpose of carrying the goods out, is sufficient. Section 55(3) withdraws the zero rate where the goods are re-imported into Mainland Tanzania.

Zero-rated is not exempt. The exporter retains the right to deduct input tax on the supplies that went into the exported goods, and the refund provisions at sections 81 to 85 govern recovery where input credits exceed output tax. An exporter treated as exempt loses that input tax entirely, and the difference lands in the cost of goods sold.

Ninety days for the money

The Foreign Exchange Regulations, 2022, published as Government Notice No. 294 on 13 May 2022, govern the proceeds. Regulation 7 sets four obligations on the exporter and one on the bank:

• Proceeds from the export of goods and services are received in foreign currency through a bank or financial institution — regulation 7(1).
• All relevant export documentation goes to the bank within seven days after completion of customs export procedures — regulation 7(3).
• Proceeds are received within the payment period agreed for the transaction, which shall not be more than ninety days — regulation 7(4).
• Where receipt runs beyond ninety days, the exporter immediately furnishes reasons for the delay and the expected time of realisation, on Form A — regulation 7(5).
• The bank submits the delayed-receipt information to the Bank of Tanzania within seven days — regulation 7(8).

Regulation 7 has not been relaxed. Government Notice No. 622 of 1 September 2023 eased a neighbouring point at regulations 3(7) and 3(8), allowing a bank to purchase foreign currency from an exporter without an existing account relationship, and the amendment made by Government Notice No. 206 of 17 July 2026 concerns non-resident access to Treasury bills and bonds. Neither touched the ninety-day period or the seven-day documentation window.

Gold has its own route. Under the Bank of Tanzania’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, notified on 1 October 2024, the 20% purchase commitment at section 59 of the Mining Act is met against a concessionary package: royalty at 4% rather than 6%, inspection fee at 0% rather than 1%, and a VAT zero rating. The route is open to mineral rights holders and licensed dealers.

What decides the file before anything is shipped

Four questions settle an export file, and all four are answerable before a buyer is found. Whether the commodity appears in the Schedule to Cap 196 or in section 18 of Cap 203, which fixes the charge and the pricing. Which regulator owns the cargo, which fixes the permit, the system and the lead time. Whether the exporting entity is licensable for the activities involved, which GN 487A of 2025 now decides for clearing and forwarding and for farm-gate buying. And whether the contract’s payment terms fit inside ninety days, which regulation 7(4) decides rather than the parties.

Answered late, those four are paid for in demurrage, penalty and a renegotiated contract. Answered first, they are a pricing input like any other.