Import Duty and Clearing Costs in Tanzania

The charges, and the order they apply in

A Tanzanian import is assessed in a fixed sequence. The customs value is the starting point; import duty is charged on it; excise is charged on the customs value plus duty; the Industrial Development Levy, Railway Development Levy and Customs Processing Fee are separate charges on their own bases; and VAT is charged last on the customs value plus every charge beneath it. Read the table from the top down and the bases stop being a mystery.

What the customs value is — and why your invoice may not be it

The customs value is the CIF value: the goods, the international freight and the insurance to the port of entry. Under the East African Community Customs Management Act the transaction value comes first, but TRA can move past an invoice it cannot support, and for a used vehicle it works from its own reference data for make, model, body type, capacity and year. Keep the auction sheet, the export certificate, the bill of lading and genuine freight invoices. A declared value is a starting position, not an entitlement, and the tax is assessed on the value TRA accepts rather than the one the seller wrote.

Import duty: the four EAC CET bands

The EAC Common External Tariff groups goods into four broad bands, and the rate follows what the item is rather than how it is described on the invoice. Raw materials, capital goods, agricultural implements and pharmaceuticals generally sit at 0%; semi-finished goods at 10%; finished consumer goods at 25%; and sensitive or fully finished goods at 35%. Several lines sit above the top band or carry a specific rate, which is why classification matters more than any other single input.

Excise is charged on CIF plus duty

Excise is not a second duty on the same base. Section 141 of the Excise (Management and Tariff) Act sets the excisable value of an import by reference to the customs value taking into account the import duty payable, so the rate applies to CIF plus duty. On a 25% duty consignment the excise base is already 25% larger than the CIF value. The Fourth Schedule then sets the rate by product: cosmetics and perfumes are 15%, footwear 10%, artificial flowers 20%, water heaters 10%, used spare parts and appliances 25%, and used tableware 20%.

Vehicles: capacity and age are separate excise components

A passenger car pays excise on its engine capacity — 5% up to 2,000cc and 10% above — and, once it is eight years old, a second component by age. The Finance Act 2026 set that age component at 18% for eight to ten years, 35% above ten up to twenty, and 40% above twenty. Those figures replaced the 15% and 30% in TRA's 2025/26 summary. Both components are charged on CIF plus duty. A used motorcycle older than three years pays 10% excise instead.

The IDL, the Railway Development Levy and the processing fee

The Industrial Development Levy is not a general import tax: it applies to the products listed in the schedule to the Imports Control Act, at 5% to 15% of the customs value. The Finance Act 2026 added exercise books, fishing nets, steel structures, aluminium doors and windows, and trailers. The Railway Development Levy is 1.5% of the customs value under section 72 of the Railways Act, with exemptions for Chapter 30 and 90 goods, fertilisers and Jet A1. The Customs Processing Fee is 1% of FOB for dry cargo from 1 July 2026 under GN 158D; TRA's 2025/26 booklet still prints 0.6%, and the regulation is the current instrument.

VAT is charged on the duty-inclusive value

Section 9 of the VAT Act defines the value of an import as the customs value plus customs duty plus any other tax, levy, fee or fiscal charge other than customs duty and VAT. That deliberately catches excise, the Industrial Development Levy, the Railway Development Levy and the Customs Processing Fee. VAT is therefore 18% of a base that is larger than CIF plus duty, and the difference is not rounding. A calculator that charges VAT on CIF alone can be wrong by several percentage points of the landed cost.

What clearing and transport add

The charges above are collected at entry. They are not the whole landed cost. Port and terminal charges, the clearing agent, inland transport, bank charges, storage and demurrage are commercial costs that sit outside the tax cascade, and TBS conformity, import permits and vehicle registration are separate requirements again. A car that has cleared customs is not yet registered, and goods that have left the port may still have storage and transport to pay. Budget those lines separately rather than treating the tax figure as the landed cost.

A worked example: a container of finished goods

Amina imports a container of finished household goods for her shop in Kariakoo. A consignment with a TSh 40,000,000 CIF value, classified in the 25% band, attracts TSh 10,000,000 in import duty. The Railway Development Levy is TSh 600,000 at 1.5% of CIF and the Customs Processing Fee is TSh 300,000 at 1% of FOB. VAT is charged on TSh 50,900,000 — CIF, duty, the levy and the fee — so it comes to TSh 9,162,000. The total collected at entry is TSh 20,062,000, making the landed-at-port cost TSh 60,062,000. If the same consignment were cleared by a VAT-registered business buying for taxable supplies, the VAT would be recoverable as input tax, so the net cost would be lower than the cash paid at the port even though the cash due on the day is unchanged.

A worked example: a nine-year-old car

Juma buys a nine-year-old car at auction and ships it to Mwanza. A nine-year-old 1,500cc car with a TSh 30,000,000 CIF value pays TSh 7,500,000 in import duty at 25%, then excise on CIF plus duty: 5% for the engine capacity and 18% for the age band, 23% in all, which is TSh 8,625,000. With the Railway Development Levy (TSh 450,000), the Customs Processing Fee (TSh 250,000) and 18% VAT on the duty-inclusive value (TSh 8,428,500), the total at entry is TSh 25,253,500 and the landed-at-port cost is TSh 55,253,500. Port charges, the clearing agent and transport to the buyer's town are additional, and TRA's assessed value for the vehicle may differ from the auction price. The age figure is calculated from the year of manufacture to the year of import: at nine years the car is in the 18% band, and at eleven it moves to 35%.

Common errors that change the answer

Using the invoice price as the customs value, charging VAT on CIF alone, forgetting that excise is charged on CIF plus duty, treating the 0.6% processing fee or the 2% railway levy as current, and assuming the four CET bands cover every line are the errors that move a budget most. Two more are specific to vehicles: using the purchase price instead of TRA's assessed value, and forgetting the age component because the car is under ten years old. A quotation from a clearing agent is a useful cross-check; the authority's own instrument is the source.

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