The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has recently issued a new notification #5241 dated 19th December 2017 (attached a scanned copy) on the application of the Article 50 of the Law #66 (Budget 2017) that set new thresholds for the mandatory and optional VAT registration.
According to this MoF notification, all businesses subject to VAT with a turnover in excess of LBP 100 million over a period of one to 4 consecutive quarters must register for VAT. Moreover, any importer or exporter should also register for VAT whatever is the level of his turnover. It is worth noting that the calculation of this threshold by the Ministry of Finance will be based on the past quarters of the year 2017 to define those who should register for VAT starting from the first quarter of the year 2018 (VAT registration should be done within a period of 2 months from the end of the year 2017 i.e. before end of February 2018) including the importers and exporters who would have done at least one import or export transaction in 2017 (VAT registration should be done within a period of 2 months from the date of the first import or export transaction).
The optional VAT registration has now on a threshold of LBP 50 million (minimum) over a period of one to 4 consecutive quarters. No optional registration for VAT will be accepted below this threshold.