Samoa Withholding tax rates
Samoa Withholding tax rates: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Samoa's non-resident withholding tax under section 10 of the Income Tax Act 2012 - a final tax on Samoan-source interest, royalties, insurance premiums, management fees, fees for personal (including professional) services and natural resource amounts derived by non-residents, at the rates in Schedule 1 - together with the exemption that removes dividends from the net. Administered by the Ministry for Revenue (Ministry of Customs and Revenue).
Compare withholding tax rates across all 8 Australasian countries →
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Income Tax Act 2012 (Samoa), s 10(2): 'Non-resident withholding tax is to be levied at the rate specified in Schedule 1 on a non-resident person who has derived interest, royalty, insurance premium, management fee, fee for personal (including professional) services, or natural resource amount from sources in Samoa'; Schedule 1(4): '(a) for an insurance premium under a life policy or arising from re-insurance, 7.5%; or (b) for interest, a royalty, insurance premium (other than an insurance premium covered by paragraph (a)), management fee, fee for personal (including professional) services, or natural resource amount, 15%' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THERE IS NO SINGLE WITHHOLDING TAX RATE, WHICH IS WHY value IS NULL. Samoa's NRWT is 15% across most payment heads but 7.5% for life/re-insurance premiums - and DIVIDENDS ARE NOT IN THE CHARGE AT ALL: s 10 does not list dividends, and Schedule 2 Part A(1)(b) makes 'a dividend paid by a resident company' exempt income outright. A caller wanting a number must name which payment type; read withholding_rates rather than expecting a headline figure. ALL RATES ARE DOMESTIC STATUTORY RATES, BEFORE TREATY RELIEF. Samoa's few double-tax agreements can reduce them; we do NOT serve treaty rates - applying one is a legal determination rather than a lookup. NO SERIES effective_from IS ASSERTED: the consolidated Act states the rates without commencement dates for the current figures and we do not supply them from memory. NRWT is FINAL (s 104): the income is excluded from assessable income, no deductions or credits reduce it. It does not apply where the amount is attributable to the non-resident's permanent establishment in Samoa (s 10(4)(b)) - such income is assessed under s 9 instead. A separate non-resident international transportation income tax of 5% applies to gross carriage income of non-resident ship/aircraft operators (s 11, Schedule 1(5)).
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/ws/withholding-tax
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/ws/withholding-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/ws/withholding-taxOther Samoa series: policy interest rate · VAGST standard rate (Value Added Goods and Services Tax) · VAGST registration threshold · National minimum wage (hourly) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Company income tax rate · Court-rule interest on judgment debts · Personal income tax rates · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Solomon Islands · Tonga · Vanuatu · Australia · Fiji · all 8