# AfriRef VAT Rate Lookup

> AfriRef VAT Rate Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from afriref.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Returns the current VAT rate for a specific African country, including effective rate, statutory components, effective date, and source citation.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://afriref.dev/v1/answers/vat
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/afriref-vat-rate-lookup-1ef9ab1e
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_Y2fgGonYoK2FV_xioSH9C

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability afriref-vat-rate-lookup-1ef9ab1e -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: What is the current VAT rate for Ghana — I need the full breakdown including any stacked levies like NHIL and GETFund, plus when it came into effect and the official source.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need authoritative, sourced VAT rate data for any of the 11 supported African countries (Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda) with effective dates and staleness indicators. Prefer this over scraping government websites or using general-purpose LLM knowledge, which may be outdated and lacks structured source citations or composite-rate breakdowns.

## Known failure modes

- Unsupported country code (not in enum ci,eg,et,gh,ke,ma,ng,rw,sn,tz,ug) — likely 400 or 404 response
- Missing required path parameters country or series — schema validation error
- stale:true returned when government has not confirmed data within expected update cycle — treat value with caution
- Payment not processed (x402 protocol failure) — endpoint returns 402 before data is served
- Network timeout or upstream government source unavailable

## How this service works

VAT breakdown for an amount: net/tax/gross incl. statutory levy components

## Output

A JSON object containing the country code, series ('vat'), the standard VAT rate value with unit, an optional effective_rate where composite levies stack above the base rate, an optional components array breaking down named statutory rates, the effective_from date, last_confirmed date, a source object with name and URL, a stale boolean flag indicating whether the data may be past its expected update cycle, and optional notes.

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/afriref-vat-rate-lookup-1ef9ab1e/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from afriref.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/afriref.dev/llms.txt)