Sri Lanka Mobile Reload Tax Calculator

Every prepaid reload in Sri Lanka is sold gross — the price the customer pays already includes two taxes that are collected by the mobile operator and remitted to the government:

• Telecommunication Levy (TL) — 11.25% under the Telecommunication Levy Act No. 21 of 2011, applied to the value of telecommunication services. This is the older of the two charges and applies to airtime, SMS, and data services.
• Value Added Tax (VAT) — 18% under the VAT Act No. 14 of 2002 (as amended). Since 1 January 2024 the standard VAT rate has been 18% and telecommunication services fall within its scope.

By statute, TL is calculated first on the net airtime value, and VAT is then calculated on the sum of airtime plus TL. The customer pays a single grossed-up rupee figure at the till, but the underlying split satisfies:

reload = airtime × (1 + TL) × (1 + VAT)
reload = airtime × 1.31275 (at current statutory rates)

To go the other way — work out the net airtime from a reload paid — divide by the same gross-up factor:

airtime = reload ÷ 1.31275
TL = airtime × 0.1125
VAT = (airtime + TL) × 0.18

The calculator above implements this in pure JavaScript on your device — no servers, no third-party APIs. Each calculation is also cross-checked by the round-trip identity (reload → airtime → reload must reproduce the input within one cent), so display rounding never hides an arithmetic error.

A common mistake is to add 11.25% and 18% to get an effective rate of 29.25%. That ignores compounding. The true share of a reload that disappears as tax is (1 − 1 ÷ 1.31275) ≈ 23.82%.

• TRCSL — Telecommunication Levy Act No. 21 of 2011 and amendments
• IRD — Value Added Tax (VAT) overview and current rate
• Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)
• Sri Lanka Budget 2024 Speech (formalising the 18% VAT)

Rates were last cross-checked against the cited Acts and IRD/TRCSL publications on 2026-05-16. The page is reviewed after every Sri Lankan budget and any amending Act.