Nile Breweries Limited v Uganda Revenue Authority
Tax Appeals Tribunal, Application No. 135 of 2024. July to December 2025. Coram: Mrs. Stella Nyapendi Chombo; Ms. Proscovia R. Nambi; Mrs. Christine Katwe.
Statutory Timelines for challenging Objection Decisions · VAT on Local Sales · Place of Supply for VAT Purposes · Zero-Rated Exports · Agency vis-à-vis Local Sales · Tax Point for Local Excise Duty
A brewer sold beer at its factory gate to two companies that exported it, and treated the sales as zero-rated exports.
The situation
The Revenue Authority assessed UGX 18,509,052,729 in local excise duty and VAT for January to November 2022 on beer supplied to two companies that exported it to South Sudan and the DRC. The brewer said they were its export agents. Several of the objection decisions it challenged had been issued in 2022 and early 2023; the application was filed in May 2024.
How it was resolved
The Tribunal held it had no jurisdiction over the decisions challenged out of time. On the rest, the contracts were sales, not agency: title passed ex-works, the buyers paid a purchase price, registered as exporters themselves and earned their own margin. The supply was in Uganda and excise was due when the beer left the factory. The assessments were upheld in full. In 2026 the High Court twice refused to stop collection while the brewer's appeal is pending.
What a practitioner takes from it
To zero-rate an export, the supplier must export: issue the export invoice and deliver to the port of exit.
A contract called agency that reads like a sale will be treated as a sale.
Each objection decision starts its own thirty days.