Mauritius CSR Rules in 2026: What the New 50% Remittance Means for Your Company’s Giving
Every profitable Mauritian company knows its CSR fund equals 2% of last year’s chargeable income. Fewer have noticed that, for funds set up in 2026, the share they must send to the MRA has fallen from 75% to 50%. Fewer still realise the Finance Act 2026 has already scheduled the return to 75%. This one-year window changes who decides how a large share of the country’s corporate giving is spent. This guide explains the rules, who they apply to, and how to use the window without leaving communities worse off when it closes.
The Short Answer
For a CSR Fund set up during calendar year 2026, a company must remit at least 50% to the Mauritius Revenue Authority. It may use the rest to run its own CSR programme, or to finance an NGO running one, within the national priority areas. For funds set up on or after 1 January 2027, the minimum remittance returns to 75%. That leaves companies up to 25% to direct themselves, as was the case between 2019 and 2025.
The details below explain how to tell which rule applies to your company, where the money can go, and why the way it is spent this year matters well beyond compliance.
How the CSR Fund Works in Mauritius
Mauritius was an early mover on compulsory corporate giving. According to the MRA’s Guide on Corporate Social Responsibility, the country has required profit-making entities to devote 2% of their profits to CSR since 2009, and companies today operate a CSR Fund under Section 50L of the Income Tax Act 1995.
The fund is calculated on chargeable income, meaning the income on which tax is assessed after allowable deductions. The MRA’s notes for the 2026-27 year of assessment set the fund at 2% of chargeable income for the preceding year. It is to be used for programmes that alleviate poverty, relieve sickness or disability, advance the education of vulnerable persons, or promote another public object that benefits the Mauritian community.
Not every entity is covered. The same notes list exceptions, including GBL companies for their foreign-source income, IRS companies, and companies that elected to pay presumptive tax in the preceding income year.
How the Remittance Rule Has Changed
Since 2017, part of every CSR Fund has had to go to the MRA, which passes it on to the National Social Inclusion Foundation. The required share has moved several times:
| CSR Fund set up | Minimum remitted to the MRA |
|---|---|
| 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018 | 50% |
| 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2025 | 75% |
| During calendar year 2026 | 50% |
| On or after 1 January 2027 | 75% |
The 2026 opening was first signalled in the Finance Bill 2025. IQ-EQ’s summary of the Bill describes companies being allowed to allocate up to 50% of CSR funds set up after 1 January 2026, compared with 25% before. The closing date came later. As KPMG Mauritius summarises, the Finance Act 2026, gazetted on 12 August 2026, confirmed the 50% minimum for CSR funds set up during calendar year 2026 and restored the 75% minimum for funds set up from 1 January 2027.
This sequence matters for planning. The MRA’s 2026-27 return notes list the 50% minimum for funds set up on or after 1 January 2026 without an end date, and several explainers published online describe it in the same open-ended way. A company that builds its 2027 budget on that assumption will find it has half the discretion it expected.
Does Your Company’s CSR Fund Fall Within the 2026 Window?
The deciding date is when the fund is set up, not when the money is spent. In the MRA’s worked examples, a CSR Fund is set up at the start of the company’s financial year: 1 January for a calendar-year company, and 1 April or 1 July for companies whose year begins then.
Applied to the current rules, that reading suggests:
- A company with a January to December year set up its 2026 fund on 1 January 2026, so the 50% minimum applies to its current fund.
- A company whose year began on 1 April or 1 July 2026 also set up its fund in 2026, so that fund may be spent well into 2027 under the 50% rule.
- Any fund set up on or after 1 January 2027 falls back under the 75% minimum.
The MRA guide was published in November 2024, before the 2026 change, so its examples illustrate the timing mechanism rather than the new percentages. Confirm your company’s position with your tax adviser before finalising a budget.
Where the Retained Share Can Go
The share a company keeps is not discretionary in the everyday sense. The MRA’s guide states that it must be used to implement a CSR programme, or to finance an NGO implementing one, within the priority areas of intervention set out in the Tenth Schedule to the Income Tax Act:
- Dealing with health problems
- Educational support and training
- Environment and sustainable development
- Family protection, including gender-based violence
- Advocacy, capacity building and research, as cross-cutting themes
- Leisure and sports
- Peace and nation-building
- Road safety and security
- Social housing
- Socio-economic development as a means of poverty alleviation
- Supporting people with disabilities
- Restoration of buildings designated as national heritage
The guide adds that these areas should target individuals and families registered under the Social Register of Mauritius, the national register used to identify households eligible for social support, and vulnerable groups under the Charter of the National Social Inclusion Foundation.
What the CSR Fund Cannot Pay For
Some uses are excluded entirely. The MRA’s guide rules out:
- Activities that discriminate on grounds such as race, place of origin, political opinion, colour, creed or sex
- Activities promoting alcohol, cigarettes or gambling
- Activities aimed at shareholders, senior staff or their families
- Contributions to government departments or parastatal bodies
- Natural disaster mitigation programmes
- Political, trade union, religious or spiritual activities
- Sponsorship for marketing purposes
- Staff welfare and employee training
The last two exclusions catch companies most often. A branded event with a charitable theme remains marketing, and training a company’s own employees remains staff development.
How and When the Remitted Share Is Paid
The remittance follows the tax calendar. The MRA’s guide explains that companies on the Advance Payment System (APS), the quarterly tax payment regime, pay in four equal parts: one with each of the first three quarterly APS statements, and the last with the annual return. Companies outside the APS remit with their annual return.
The guide describes this schedule for the 75% share that applied when it was written, so check how your adviser applies it to a 2026 fund. Two further points hold regardless. Any unspent CSR balance must be remitted with the annual return, and where the Director-General believes CSR money has not been spent, the MRA may raise an assessment.
A slow decision, in other words, does not preserve the money. It simply sends it elsewhere.
A Worked Example
For illustration only, consider a company with a CSR Fund of Rs 1,000,000:
- Fund set up in 2025: at least Rs 750,000 to the MRA, up to Rs 250,000 for the company to direct
- Fund set up in 2026: at least Rs 500,000 to the MRA, up to Rs 500,000 for the company to direct
- Fund set up in 2027: at least Rs 750,000 to the MRA, up to Rs 250,000 for the company to direct
The additional Rs 250,000 in 2026 is temporary. The question is what it builds.
Why the 2026 Window Matters Beyond Compliance
The priority areas exist because need is concentrated. According to Statistics Mauritius’ Poverty Analysis based on the 2023 Household Budget Survey, as summarised on our poverty facts and figures page, 15.7% of children under 16 were living in relative poverty in 2023, around 33,000 children. Relative poverty here means living below half the median household income per adult equivalent. Among people in relative poverty who were unemployed, six in ten were aged 16 to 24.
These figures describe a structural pattern, not individual failings. Children’s circumstances reflect household income, family structure and access to services, and young people’s job prospects reflect qualifications, local labour markets and opportunity as much as effort.
At YUVA, we call the extra share companies control this year Borrowed Discretion: spending freedom granted for one year only, which should therefore be invested in work built to outlast it.
The risk of a one-year window, in our view, is not that money goes unspent. It is that money is spent on programmes designed to stop. For a young person, a mentor or class that disappears after a few months can reinforce the belief that support is always temporary. That makes the next offer of help harder to trust. Generosity that ends abruptly can leave a community less ready to engage than before.
Borrowed Discretion changes the question a CSR committee asks. Not “what can we fund this year?” but “what can we fund this year that will still be working in 2028?”
“A one-year rule should never fund a one-day event.”
Three Ways to Use the 2026 Window Well
1. Fund continuity, not novelty. Before approving a programme, decide how it will continue in 2027, when your retained share shrinks. A modest programme that runs for three years usually achieves more than a larger one that stops after twelve months. Choosing a partner whose existing work already matches your goals makes continuity far more likely, as we explain in [internal link: How to Choose the Right NGO for Your CSR Fund in Mauritius].
2. Fund capability, not just activity. Direct part of the extra share towards what keeps working after the money is spent: trained facilitators, curricula, safeguarding systems and monitoring tools. The priority areas recognise capacity building as a cross-cutting theme for this reason.
3. Fund evidence. Build baseline and follow-up measurement into the programme from the start. When budgets tighten in 2027, the programmes that continue will be those that can show what changed. Our guide to how companies can partner with NGOs for real impact sets out the difference between outputs and outcomes in more detail.
Before your next budget meeting, consider:
- If your retained share falls back to a quarter in 2027, which of this year’s commitments will you still be able to keep?
- Are you funding activities that end with the budget, or capabilities that continue without it?
- Were the people your programme serves asked what they needed before the budget was set?
What 2026 Can Leave Behind
The Finance Act gives Mauritian companies a year of wider discretion. What they do with it will remain visible far longer: in the skills a young person carries into a first job, in a class that is still running in 2028, in an NGO able to plan beyond its next grant. The broader question of whether poverty in Mauritius can be reduced, which we explore in Is Mauritian Poverty Solvable?, will not be settled by any single budget. But budgets designed to last are part of the answer.
In 2027, the rules will change again. What you build in 2026 does not have to.
If your company is deciding how to use its 2026 CSR fund, you can explore partnership opportunities with YUVA, where our work in education, health, empowerment and employment sits within several of the national priority areas.