The Irish VAT rates, and what sits at each
Ireland has five VAT rates. The percentages have barely moved in a decade; what moves — often, and with a Finance Act behind it every time — is which supplies sit at which rate. This page is the whole picture in one table, with the effective dates that most rate lists leave out.
There are five. That is the answer most people want and it is worth saying before anything else, because a surprising number of rate lists on the internet show three or four — they omit the livestock rate, or they treat exempt supplies as a sixth rate, which it is not.
| Rate | Name | Percentage in force since | Listed supplies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23% | Standard rate — the default | from 1 March 2021 | 6 |
| 13.5% | Reduced rate | from 1 January 2003 | 16 |
| 9% | Second reduced rate | from 1 July 2011 | 8 |
| 4.8% | Livestock rate | from 1 January 2005 | 2 |
| 0% | Zero rate | from the introduction of VAT | 10 |
The percentages are stable. The lists are not.
Read that third column again. Not one of the five percentages has moved since 2012, and two of them have not moved since 2005. If Irish VAT were only a set of percentages, this page could have been written a decade ago and would still be right.
What changes — constantly, and with a Finance Act behind it every time — is the fourth column. A trade does not move because a rate changed; a trade moves because an amending section inserted a reference to a paragraph of Schedule 3 into a different subsection of section 46. The percentage on either side of the move was already there.
That is why this site models a rate as a percentage plus a list of supplies each with its own effective period, rather than as a number with a date. A rate-only model stays right about the arithmetic and goes quietly wrong about the answer, which is the worse of the two failures because nothing about it looks broken.
What moved most recently
| Supply | Moved from | To | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catering and restaurant supplies, excluding alcohol, soft drinks and bottled water | the reduced rate | 9% | from 1 July 2026 |
| Hot take-away food, and hot tea and coffee | the reduced rate | 9% | from 1 July 2026 |
| Hairdressing services | the reduced rate | 9% | from 1 July 2026 |
All three on one day, by one section of one Act. The page on that change sets out what did not move with them, which is where the mistakes are.
The fraction inside a gross price
Every rate has a companion number that nobody publishes and everybody needs: the fraction of a VAT-inclusive price that is VAT. It is not the rate. Getting this wrong is the most common arithmetic error in VAT and it always errs the same way, understating the net.
| Rate | VAT fraction of the gross | As a percentage of the gross | Or divide the gross by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23% | 23 ⁄ 123 | 18.7% | 1.230 |
| 13.5% | 13.5 ⁄ 113.5 | 11.89% | 1.135 |
| 9% | 9 ⁄ 109 | 8.26% | 1.090 |
| 4.8% | 4.8 ⁄ 104.8 | 4.58% | 1.048 |
| 0% | none | 0% | 1.000 |
The third column is the one to keep. At the standard rate the VAT in a gross price is a little over eighteen and a half per cent of it — not twenty-three per cent. Anyone who takes 23% off a gross figure to find the net has taken off too much, every time, and the error grows with the invoice. The reverse calculator does this properly.
Where all of this comes from
Two independent sources for every percentage, and the reason is worth stating: Revenue publishes five pages, one per rate, describing in detail what each rate applies to — and not one of those pages states a percentage. The figures come from the statute and from Revenue’s separate historical-rates table, which agree.
Source: Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010, s. 46(1) (Law Reform Commission revised text, updated to 1 January 2026), and Revenue’s historical VAT rates table (published 1 January 2026). Every page on this site lists its own sources, and the sources page lists all of them together.