American Samoa Bookkeeping Services

American Samoa is the one US jurisdiction where the income tax code is frozen in time. The Territory adopted the federal Internal Revenue Code as it stood on 31 December 2000 — later federal changes do not flow through automatically. There is no sales tax and no gross receipts tax; the import excise does that job at the port. And the 2% wage tax that still appears in the online code was repealed in 2021, which makes it the most likely stale line in any American Samoa payroll setup.

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On This Page

• The American Samoa small-business tax landscape
• A frozen income tax code
• The import excise does the job of a sales tax
• The repealed wage tax that will not go away
• The licence year is calendar, and the deadline bites
• American Samoa villages we serve
• American Samoa FAQs

The American Samoa Small-Business Tax Landscape

American Samoa Code Annotated §§ 11.0403, 11.1002, 27.0209, 27.0213, 27.0217, 27.0240 and 27.0241; American Samoa Tax Office (Department of the Treasury); ASG Treasury Customs Division notification of the excise increase effective 24 April 2018; Department of Commerce business licence guidance; checked 5 October 2026. Important: the online Code Annotated is current only to about 2021 and still publishes superseded figures — the 5% excise rate, the 190% beer rate and the repealed 2% wage tax all still appear there. We have used the later Treasury and legislative figures above and flagged them as such. Confirm all rates with ASG Treasury or your CPA before relying on them.

A Frozen Income Tax Code

Every other US jurisdiction with a “mirror” income tax updates automatically. American Samoa does not, and the difference is deliberate.

The statute adopts the income tax and income tax rules in force in the United States as in effect on 31 December 2000. A 2001 amendment inserted that date and deleted the phrase covering provisions “which may hereafter be enacted or adopted.” That deletion is the whole story: later federal changes do not flow through on their own. The Fono has to legislate to pick any of them up.

You can see the consequence in the Tax Office’s own publications, which post an IRS 2000 Tax Table and Instructions alongside each current year’s return. The return itself is Form 390, published as an Excel workbook rather than a PDF.

Where the adopted federal Code conflicts with the Territory’s own amendments in Chapter 05, the local amendments control.

What this means for bookkeeping is that you cannot assume a federal treatment applies because it applies on the mainland. A deduction, a depreciation convention or a credit enacted since 2000 may simply not exist here. We are not CPAs and we do not make those calls — but we keep the underlying records in enough detail that your preparer can apply whichever rule actually governs, rather than having to reconstruct the detail after the fact.

The Import Excise Does the Job of a Sales Tax

With no sales tax and no gross receipts tax, the import excise is the Territory’s main indirect tax — and it behaves nothing like a sales tax in the books.

A sales tax is collected from a customer and remitted periodically. The excise is paid by you, the importer, at the port, before the goods are released. There is no monthly return for an ordinary small importer; it is transaction by transaction. That makes it a cost of inventory, not a tax liability — and it belongs in landed cost, not in a tax account.

The catch-all rate is 8%, raised from 5% with effect from 24 April 2018, with a 25-cent minimum. The published online code still prints 5%, which is one reason stale figures circulate.

The base matters as much as the rate. Since February 2017 the computation has been CIF — it includes costs, charges and expenses incident to packing and shipping to American Samoa, with only bulk fuel excluded. So freight and insurance are inside the base. A landed-cost calculation built on the invoice total alone will understate the excise on every shipment, and it will understate inventory cost by the same amount.

Goods brought in for export sale and consumed outside American Samoa can be exempt under separate-storage rules. That is a real exemption with real conditions, and it depends on inventory records that keep export stock genuinely separate.

The Repealed Wage Tax That Will Not Go Away

If we find one thing wrong in an existing American Samoa payroll setup, this is usually it.

The Territory levied a 2% wage tax on all wages earned in American Samoa, on top of income tax, from tax year 2012 — paid by the wage earner, reported on the wage earner’s return, and accompanied by a direction to employers to raise minimum withholding from 4% to 6%. It was repealed in April 2021, after thirteen years.

The problem is that the online Code Annotated still publishes the wage tax section as live text. Anyone configuring a payroll system from the published code — or copying a setup built before 2021 — will carry a 2% wage tax line and a 6% minimum withholding rate that no longer have any legal basis.

The symptom is over-withholding: staff are short on every cheque, and the Territory is holding money against a tax that does not exist. It is quietly corrosive, and it does not surface in a trial balance review because the amounts look plausible.

We check it on every American Samoa engagement. Where sources conflict, we tell you which source says what rather than picking one silently.

The Licence Year Is Calendar, and the Deadline Bites

American Samoa business licences run on a strict calendar year. The statute is explicit: all licences are issued on a calendar-year basis regardless of when issued, and expire on 31 December of the year issued or renewed.

The renewal window is 1 October to 31 December. Miss 1 January and a late fee applies. Miss 31 January and business operations are suspended until you are licensed again. That is a harder consequence than most jurisdictions attach to a late renewal, and it arrives five weeks after the deadline.

Two further details that affect how the books have to be structured. A separate licence is required for each separate location — so a second shop is a second licence and a second $25, not an extension of the first. And no licence may be issued until all fees and debts owed to the Government are paid, which turns an unreconciled government payable into an operating problem rather than an accounting one.

New businesses get a prorated fee, but never for less than three months. Businesses that close get no refund.

The statutory fee schedule is old and shows no later amendment, so treat $25 as the sourced figure for a general business and confirm anything else with the Department of Commerce.

American Samoa Villages We Serve

We serve businesses in Pago Pago, Tafuna, Fagatogo, Utulei, Nu’uuli and across Tutuila, and in the Manu’a Islands, all remotely. Overnight turnaround works unusually well across this time difference: work sent at the end of your day is done before the next one starts. See also Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Browse all locations.

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American Samoa Bookkeeping FAQs

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