{"id":54203,"date":"2016-04-29T13:28:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T20:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=54203"},"modified":"2016-04-29T13:28:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T20:28:53","slug":"federal-state-national-government-and-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/29\/federal-state-national-government-and-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal state, National government and taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jayampathy Molligoda\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

According to media reports, Sri Lanka will join the collective of states that charge Value Added Tax (VAT) on health and education. These two most important service sectors are exempted from VAT in most countries where private citizens are not ill-treated by rulers. Further, VAT on health and education has come as the government is purportedly trying to create a ‘knowledge economy. It is also faced with the problem of ‘ageing population’. It would be interesting to find out why the government is trying to impose additional taxes in contravention of concept of good governance.<\/p>\n

The SLFP leadership should have allowed those SLFP members who contested under UPFA and are now in the opposition, including those members from other constituent parties, to continue to oppose the government. This is in keeping with the mandate given by the people at the last general election. Instead, the SLFP Secretary has warned that disciplinary action will be taken against some 30 members of SLFP, if they attend the Joint Opposition May Day rally at Kirulapone. The Speaker, on 03rd September 2015, declared in Parliament that a national government had been duly formed between the UNP and the SLFP. These SLFP members have already presented a no confidence motion against a government Minister. This is the first time that a section of the government members presenting a no confidence motion against a member thereof. Therefore, the national government constituted on 3rd September is a misnomer.<\/p>\n

The present so called “national government” has only enabled the elected MPs and even defeated candidates to secure portfolios and privileges in Parliament at the expense of the taxpayer. People continue to pay direct and indirect taxes to maintain a large Cabinet of ministers and non-cabinet and deputy ministers. The government budget deficit, as well as the negative balance in the current account, will continue to rise. The \u2018national government\u2019 has so far failed to address the pressing needs of the people and improving their quality of life. They have not even been able to avoid the economic downturn. The government has no moral right to appoint more than 30 ministers.<\/p>\n

One could argue that the real motive of dragging the SLFP into the national government was to muster its support for federalism through a new constitution. This is the hidden agenda of the proposed constitution making.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jayampathy Molligoda\u00a0Courtesy The Island According to media reports, Sri Lanka will join the collective of states that charge Value Added Tax (VAT) on health and education. These two most important service sectors are exempted from VAT in most countries where private citizens are not ill-treated by rulers. Further, VAT on health and education has come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54203","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=54203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}