{"id":125828,"date":"2022-05-31T17:08:12","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=125828"},"modified":"2022-05-31T17:08:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:08:12","slug":"sri-lanka-proposes-return-to-higher-tax-rates-to-win-imf-loan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/05\/31\/sri-lanka-proposes-return-to-higher-tax-rates-to-win-imf-loan\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka Proposes Return to Higher Tax Rates to Win IMF Loan"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy <span style=\"font-size: revert; font-weight: revert;\">Bloomberg<\/span><span class=\"navi-bar__logo--uk\" style=\"font-size: revert; font-weight: revert;\">\u00a0UK<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Government plans to return to tax status before 2019 cuts<\/li><li>Value-added tax to be raised to 12% in bid to boost revenues<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/quote\/1005Z:SL\">Sri Lanka\u2019s<\/a>&nbsp;new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe proposed to raise tax rates to help meet conditions for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The value added tax would rise to 12% from 8%, telecom levy to 15% from 11.25%, and standard corporate tax to 30% from 24%, Wickremesinghe said in a statement Tuesday. The increases will be implemented over the immediate and near term,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government is trying to revert to tax rates that existed before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa slashed them in a failed bid to stimulate the economy, before the pandemic disrupted global travel and sapped the island nation of tourism revenue.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These reforms are now being looked as policies that led to a significant loss of government revenue,\u201d Wickremesinghe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This fiscal imbalance has significant adverse spillover effects over the economy,\u201d he added. Sri Lanka\u2019s economic outlook remains vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bankrupt country must now raise revenues and slash expenditure to win a loan from the IMF. The multilateral lender wants a primary deficit of 2% of gross domestic product by 2025 but Sri Lanka will probably only break even or post a 1% surplus at best, Wickremesinghe had said previously.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka had introduced a low tax regime shortly after Rajapaksa was elected in 2019, leading to annual revenue losses of as much as 800 billion rupees ($2.2 billion), Wickremesinghe said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Data earlier Tuesday showed inflation accelerated more than expected toward 40%. Citizens are suffering shortages of food, fuel and medicines as the nation has run out of dollars to pay for imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has frozen repayments on foreign debt and is moving toward talks with global bondholders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Bloomberg\u00a0UK Government plans to return to tax status before 2019 cuts Value-added tax to be raised to 12% in bid to boost revenues Sri Lanka\u2019s&nbsp;new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe proposed to raise tax rates to help meet conditions for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. The value added tax would rise to 12% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}