UPDATES TO THE DOMESTIC EXCISE RETURN

The Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) is informing all valued taxpayers that the Domestic Excise (DEX) Return on Msonkho Online has been updated, effective 1st February 2025. These updates simplify the process of providing the required information, ensuring a smoother tax filing experience.

Key Improvements to the Domestic Excise Tax Return:

·         Product Description Field: A Product Description field has been added to enable taxpayers to provide more specific descriptions of products. Whereas taxpayers could only describe using the Product Type, like Soft Drinks, a new field called Product Description will now enable taxpayers to provide a more specific description of each product. E.g. Coca-cola 300 ml or Quench 500 ml.

·         Quantity and Unit Price Fields: A Unit Price field has been added to facilitate calculation of Excisable Value by multiplying Excisable Units and Unit Price. In addition, fields previously capturing values have been changed to capture units or quantities.

·         Specific Tax Rates: Improvements have been made to accommodate the use of specific tax rates for products like cigarettes. Specific tax rates are expressed in units of currency per specified quantity. E.g. US$15 per 1000 cigarette sticks or K1,000.00 per kilogram. Meanwhile, this feature is currently only applicable to cigarettes.

·         Reference Data: A downloadable file containing reference data values for each template that requires such values to be entered exactly as required by the system has been included in a convenient location next to each template. Examples of reference data are “Nature of Activity” and “Product Type” for the Domestic Excise Tax Computation on Goods template.

These values need to be entered exactly as they are stored in the system to avoid upload errors.

For further clarification and assistance, please contact the MRA Call Centre on 672 for free or e-mail: callcentre@mra.mw

Thank you for using Msonkho Online.

Daniel D. Daka
COMMISSIONER GENERAL