The second reduced rate, and the 2026 move

Ireland calls this the second reduced rate, which is an accurate name and a useless one: what it actually is, is the rate the State reaches for when it wants to lower the price of something without changing the price of everything. It has been 9% since 1 July 2011. In that time the list of what sits at it has been rewritten repeatedly, in both directions, and the current list is not the one most guidance online still shows.

The mechanism is worth understanding because it explains the churn. Section 46(1) of the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010 does not have one 9 per cent paragraph — it has four, lettered (ca), (caa), (cab) and (cac), plus (cb). Each one names specific paragraphs of Schedule 3 and says those are charged at 9% rather than at the reduced rate they would otherwise attract. Adding a trade to the 9 per cent rate is therefore not a rate change at all: it is an amendment inserting a Schedule 3 reference into one of those paragraphs.

What sits here now

The Came from column is the one to read. 3 of these entries arrived from another rate, all on the same day — 1 July 2026 — by section 71 of the Finance Act 2025. That change has its own page, because the exclusions did not move with them.

Electricity and gas carry an end date, and it is a real one: the Act says the 9 per cent treatment applies for the period from 1 May 2022 to 31 December 2030. That period has already been extended once — the current end date was substituted by section 69 of the Finance Act 2025 — so treating it as fixed would be a mistake in either direction. It is in the payload with the dates the Act states, and the electricity calculator applies this rate rather than the standard one, which is where most appliance calculators go wrong for Ireland.

Qualifying apartments is the newest entry and the strangest-looking: there is a short window from 8 October 2025 to 25 November 2025 in the Act, and then a second provision running from 26 November 2025 to 31 December 2030. Two paragraphs, two periods, one policy — the first was superseded almost immediately. The payload carries the live one; the superseded window is recorded on the updates page.

Worked, both ways

A restaurant bill, since that is the reason most people arrive on this page in 2026:

The second row is what to check against a receipt. On a 9% bill the VAT already included is nine one-hundred-and-ninths of the total — a shade over eight per cent of what you paid, not 9% of it.

Where this comes from

Three sources for this one rather than two, because the Law Reform Commission’s revised text of the Act is updated only to 1 January 2026 and therefore does not carry the July 2026 change at all. The section as enacted does, and it is cited alongside.