VAT rates around the world in 2026: the complete country table

I maintain a VAT calculator, so I spend an unreasonable amount of my life looking at tax rates — and the three questions that land in front of me most are the same ones people type into search engines: what is the vat rate uk shoppers pay, what are the standard vat rates europe has ended up with, and which country holds the record for the highest vat rate in the world. This page is my full answer: the complete 2026 country table I work from, with every standard and reduced rate in one place, plus the stories behind the extremes.

The complete VAT rates table for 2026

Here is the table, sorted from the highest standard rate to the lowest. The standard rate is the one that applies to most goods and services; the reduced rates apply only to specific categories each country chooses, usually essentials such as food, books, medicines and passenger transport. Rates marked GST or consumption tax are the same style of tax wearing a local name — the mechanism is identical, which is why I list them alongside VAT.

Standard and reduced VAT rates in force for 2026. Sources: European Commission TAXUD, “VAT rates applied in the Member States of the European Union” (2026); HMRC (UK); SARS (South Africa); ZATCA (Saudi Arabia); FTA (UAE); NBR (Bahrain); OTA (Oman); IRD (New Zealand); National Tax Agency (Japan); ATO (Australia); IRAS (Singapore); Swiss Federal Tax Administration; CRA (Canada); CBIC / GST Council (India).

Two honest warnings about any table like this, mine included. First, a reduced rate is a category, not a discount: Germany’s 7% covers food and books but not restaurant meals eaten in, and France runs four rates at once (20%, 10%, 5.5% and a 2.1% super-reduced rate for medicines and press). Second, rates move — I list the recent movers further down this page — so treat this table as a 2026 snapshot and re-check before you file anything serious. When you need the arithmetic rather than the rate, my VAT calculator adds or removes any of these rates in one step.

The highest VAT rate in the world: Hungary’s 27%

Hungary has held the record since 2012, when it raised its standard rate to 27% — the highest VAT rate in the world, and nobody else is particularly close. To feel what 27% does to a price, run a plain $100 net item through it: the tax alone is $27 and the shelf price becomes $127. Work it backwards from a $500 gross price in Budapest and $106.30 of that $500 is VAT — the net underneath is only $393.70. Compare Luxembourg at the other end of the EU: the same $100 net item carries $17 of tax and sells for $117.

The chasing pack sits a full two points behind: Finland at 25.5% (the EU’s second-highest, after its September 2024 rise) and then Denmark, Sweden and Croatia at 25% each. Denmark deserves a special mention — it is one of the very few countries with no reduced rate at all, so the 25% applies to almost everything, full stop. Outside Europe, nobody comes near these figures: the highest non-European standard rates on my table are 15% (South Africa, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand’s GST), barely more than half of Hungary’s.

Standard VAT rates in Europe: one market, 27 answers

People imagine the EU harmonised VAT into a single rate. It harmonised the rules, not the numbers. EU law sets a floor — the standard rate may not fall below 15%, and reduced rates may not fall below 5% except under historical derogations — and then every member state picks its own figure above that floor. The result: standard vat rates europe-wide span a ten-point range, from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary, and the 27 member states average about 21.9%.

That spread has real consequences if you sell across borders. A $100 net digital product sold to a consumer in Luxembourg grosses $117; sold to a consumer in Hungary, it grosses $127 — a $10 difference created purely by the buyer’s address. This is why the EU runs the One Stop Shop scheme, letting sellers declare all their EU consumer sales in one country while charging each buyer’s local rate. If you sell into Europe, the rate table above is not trivia; it is your price list’s hidden variable.

The VAT rate UK sellers actually charge

The vat rate uk businesses work with is 20% — the standard rate since 2011 — with a 5% reduced rate (home energy, children’s car seats and a short list of others) and a 0% zero rate that quietly covers most food, children’s clothes and books. One legal figure worth stating exactly, because it is a pound-denominated fact rather than a calculator example: a UK business must register for VAT once its taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months (HMRC threshold, 2026). Below that line you cannot charge VAT at all; above it, you must.

The UK’s 20% rate produces my favourite piece of VAT mental arithmetic. Because 20/120 equals exactly one sixth, dividing any VAT-inclusive UK price by 6 hands you the VAT inside it. A $120 shelf price? $120 ÷ 6 = $20 of VAT, sitting on a $100 net. No other major rate divides that cleanly, which is why UK bookkeepers guard the ÷6 trick so fondly. One UK quirk for travellers: the old tax-free shopping scheme for visitors ended in 2021, so there are no longer VAT refunds on high-street purchases — a fact that still surprises people at Heathrow.

The low end: 5% floors and the countries with no VAT

At the bottom of the table the numbers get small enough to change behaviour. The United Arab Emirates and Oman charge 5%, matched by Canada’s federal GST at 5% (Canadian provinces add their own layers on top). Switzerland sits at 8.1% — low, famously precise, and paired with a 2.6% reduced rate for everyday goods. And then there are the true zeros of the system: Qatar and Kuwait have signed the Gulf VAT framework but, as of 2026, have never switched the tax on, so the correct rate for both is simply “no VAT”.

The biggest no-VAT economy of all is the United States. There is no federal VAT; instead, states levy sales tax on the final sale only — a genuinely different mechanism, and one I compare head-to-head with VAT in my companion piece. If you are working out US tax rather than VAT, the tool you want is a tax calculator built for that system, not a VAT tool with the rate swapped.

Why reduced rates exist — and why they cause arguments

Reduced rates are politics expressed as arithmetic. Governments use them to soften the tax on things voters cannot avoid: staple food, medicines, books, public transport, children’s items. The UK zero-rates most food; Japan charges 8% instead of 10% on food and non-alcoholic drinks; Australia makes basic food GST-free. Every one of those choices creates a boundary, and every boundary creates an argument about which side a product falls on — is a cake food but a biscuit a luxury? (The UK genuinely litigated that question.) When I sanity-check a receipt, a wrong-rate mix-up between a standard-rated and a reduced-rated item is the single most common error I find.

Rates move: the changes I have had to make recently

This table is a snapshot, and snapshots expire. Finland lifted its standard rate from 24% to 25.5% in September 2024. Slovakia jumped from 20% to 23% in January 2025, Estonia from 22% to 24% in July 2025, and Romania from 19% to 21% in August 2025. Singapore stepped its GST up from 8% to 9% in January 2024. Saudi Arabia tripled its rate from 5% to 15% back in July 2020, in the middle of an oil-price shock. And India’s GST 2.0 reform, effective 22 September 2025 per the CBIC, collapsed a thicket of slabs into two main rates — 5% and 18% — with a 40% demerit rate for a short luxury list. If a rate in this table decides a real invoice, verify it against the tax authority’s own list before you rely on it; I do.

Sources: European Commission TAXUD, VAT rates applied in the Member States of the European Union (2026); HMRC VAT rates and registration threshold (2026); and the national tax authorities listed under the table. Worked examples are in US$ and were computed for this article (gross = net × (1 + rate); net = gross ÷ (1 + rate)). Rates are a 2026 snapshot — they change, so verify before filing.