The monthly subscription you pay on the company card may be the most precisely recorded line in your books, and the least clearly resolved in your tax return.
Most companies now buy services that never pass through customs and never arrive on a truck: software subscriptions, cloud storage, digital advertising, design and analytics tools, platform fees. These are posted as operating expenses, and the treatment looks complete. The tax question, however, remains open: how were these purchases treated in the general sales tax return?
The Income and Sales Tax Department has invited non-resident regional and international companies with no branch in Jordan, which supply electronic services to residents, to register in the general sales tax network through a dedicated platform, treating those services as an imported service for residents in Jordan. That invitation is addressed to the supplier, but it concerns the resident buyer just as directly.
Management takeaway
- Electronic services you buy from a supplier with no branch in Jordan are treated, in the Department's own wording, as an imported service.
- The platform is not new. Its copyright notice dates to 2024, which means the channel has existed for some time and the Department is restating it. The exposure may therefore be historic in your books, not only prospective.
- A supplier's registration does not automatically settle your own position. It eases the supplier's compliance; it is not a confirmation that your treatment is correct.
- The platform's "registered companies" list is not live, so do not build an internal control on checking it.
- Begin with an inventory of your digital subscriptions over the last twenty-four months, before any decision.
1. Imported digital services are not a marginal expense line
The problem starts with the size of the line, not its nature. A subscription of a hundred dollars a month does not prompt a review in most managers' eyes. Yet a mid-sized company may today carry twenty such subscriptions across accounting, design, storage, email, advertising and social platforms, spread over more than one card and more than one department.
Aggregated over two years, the scale of the question changes. More importantly, these lines rarely pass through the formal procurement cycle: the technical or marketing lead buys them directly, and they reach the accounting team only as an entry on a card statement.
2. Start with a subscription inventory, not with the legislation
The right order of work is to know what you hold first. Reviewing the legislation before you know the size and nature of the lines spends time on questions that may not apply to your company at all.
Extract from card statements and bank accounts, for the last twenty-four months, every recurring payment in a foreign currency to a party outside Jordan. Then classify them: which of these is an electronic service consumed inside the Kingdom? A subscription to a tool your team uses in Amman differs from platform fees relating to activity outside the Kingdom, and from a physical good that entered through customs and carries its own separate treatment. And if your subscriptions are already recorded in an accounting system, start the extraction there — see Start Smart with Odoo: A Practical Platform for New and Small Companies.
3. A supplier's registration does not replace reviewing your own position
The platform states explicitly that a supplier's registration reflects positively on resident recipients of the services and on the speed with which they discharge their financial position. That is careful wording, and it is worth pausing on: the effect is positive, but it is not described as an exemption.
Your supplier's registration should therefore not be read as an announcement that your file is closed. Each case is assessed on its own merits, according to the nature of the service, where it is consumed, the dates of payment, and the entity's own standing in the general sales tax network. The practical difference between one case and another can be significant, which is why a review should rest on your own data rather than on a general rule.
4. Check the invoice; do not rely on a page that is not yet live
The platform presents an item labelled "registered companies", which looks like an ideal verification tool: open the list and search for your supplier's name. That item, however, does not lead to a working page as at the date of this article, and neither does the "tax law" item on the same platform.
Until those pages are live, verification should rest on what you already hold:
- The invoice itself: does it carry a Jordanian tax registration number? Does it show sales tax calculated, or a net amount only?
- The supplier's disclosure: many global platforms publish a page on their tax treatment by country; consult it and keep a dated copy.
- A direct question: write to the supplier with one specific question — are you registered in the general sales tax network in Jordan? Keep the answer on file.
5. Fix the treatment into a monthly cycle
The platform states that payments are transferred monthly. Whatever your review concludes, a treatment applied once and then left alone drifts within months, because digital subscriptions change constantly: tools are added, plans are upgraded, renewals run automatically in different currencies.
Make "imported services" a standing step in the monthly close, not an annual project. Assign one owner to it, and require that any new digital subscription is known to the accounting team before its first payment rather than after. And if you are also addressing how invoices are captured and archived, see Electronic Invoicing in Jordan: Is Your System Audit-Ready?
Common mistakes
- Treating the line as settled because it is an operating expense. Correct accounting treatment does not resolve the tax treatment.
- Assuming a small amount exempts the line from review. The assessment rests on the aggregate and the nature of the service, not on the size of a single payment.
- Generalising from what one supplier has done. Each supplier has its own position; one may be registered and another not.
- Applying the same logic to prior periods without distinction. The channel has existed since 2024, and earlier periods are examined on their own facts rather than by analogy to today.
- Building an internal control on a page that is not live. A control you cannot perform today is not a control.
A practical structure for the inventory
One table is enough to begin, and it is filled from card statements rather than from memory:
| Supplier | Type of service | Currency and monthly amount | Date of first payment | Where is the service consumed? | Does the invoice show tax? | Supplier's answer on registration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The last two columns matter most, and they are usually the only ones whose answers are not already sitting in the accounting system.
Do your imported services need a review?
Kayan helps companies inventory their purchases of electronic services, review how those purchases are treated in the general sales tax return, and fix the step into the monthly close. We also help foreign and Gulf companies selling electronic services into Jordan understand the registration and payment requirements through the platform dedicated to non-residents.
Book a consultation — or start with a 15-minute intro meeting in which we review where you stand today and define the next step, with no obligation.
Official sources
- Income and Sales Tax Department — launch of the registration platform for regional and international companies supplying electronic services to Jordan
- General Sales Tax on E-Commerce Platform — Non-Residents
These sources were reviewed on 24 September 2026.
Disclaimer
This article provides general information and does not constitute financial, tax or legal advice. Each case is assessed on its own merits, and the applicable official requirements should be verified before any action is taken. Kayan Advisory does not provide legal representation, and nothing here confirms the standing of any entity before any official authority.