Capital Gains Tax (Rate of Interest) Notice, 2025

Interest on capital gains tax that is unpaid or overpaid is no longer a fixed figure. For any month or part of a month, it is the Bank Policy Rate as revised from time to time plus five per cent for amounts in local currency, and ten per cent for amounts in foreign currency. Because the local-currency rate now tracks the policy rate, what you owe on arrears moves when the Reserve Bank moves.

The notice also sets out when ZIMRA has to pay interest to you. The Commissioner must pay interest at those rates on capital gains withholding tax that was overpaid and not refunded within sixty days of the date you claimed the refund or the date the assessment was completed, whichever is later.

There is an exception and a proviso worth reading together. No interest is owed if the overpayment was caused by an incomplete or defective return, or another error on your side, rather than an error by the Commissioner. And where the refund was held up by an incomplete or defective return that the Commissioner brought to your attention inside the sixty days, the sixty-day clock starts again from the date you resubmit a correct or complete return.

The Capital Gains Tax (Rate of Interest) Notice, 2022 (SI 211 of 2022) is repealed. No commencement date is stated; the notice was gazetted in an Extraordinary Gazette dated 19 March 2025.