{"id":95692,"date":"2019-11-27T13:09:20","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T20:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=95692"},"modified":"2019-11-27T13:14:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T20:14:43","slug":"cabinet-announces-several-tax-reliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/11\/27\/cabinet-announces-several-tax-reliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Cabinet announces several tax reliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">Courtesy Ada Derana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The Cabinet has given its approval to remove the Nation Building \nTax (NBT), Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Tax and Withholding Tax on interests, \nthe Co-Cabinet Spokesperson Bandula Gunawardena said today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He mentioned this during the first press briefing to announce the \ndecisions of the new government\u2019s Cabinet of Ministers, held at the \nDepartment of Government Information this evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u0db4\u0dc5\u0db8\u0dd4 \u0d85\u0db8\u0dcf\u0dad\u0dca\u200d\u0dba\u00a0\u0db8\u0dab\u0dca\u0da9\u0dbd \u0dbb\u0dd0\u0dc3\u0dca\u0dc0\u0dd3\u0db8\u0dda\u0daf\u0dd3\u00a0\u0db6\u0daf\u0dd4 \u0dc3\u0dc4\u0db1 \u0dbb\u0dd0\u0dc3\u0d9a\u0dca\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E-OvipR2Jlc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He also said that the Cabinet has further decided to reduce the \ntelecommunications levy by 25%. Thereby the current telecommunications \nlevy of 30% has been reduced to 5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These decisions were taken during the first Cabinet meeting of newly \nformed government held this morning (27) at the Presidential \nSecretariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cabinet of Ministers also decided to cut the Value Added Tax \n(VAT) from 15% to 8%. The ceiling for VAT has been raised to Rs. 25 \nmillion turnover per month from existing Rs. 1 million, the Co-Cabinet \nSpokesman said further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the meantime, the income tax on the construction industry has also been reduced from 28% to 14%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cabinet also announced that all religious places are exempted from taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Minister Gunawardena charged that the economy had collapsed under the\n previous government and that interest rates have sky-rocketed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore the new government has decided to abolish some taxes and \nalso to reduce VAT from Dec. 1 to boost economic activities, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweeping tax cuts and removals were leading election pledges in the \nmanifesto launched by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in view of the \nrecently held presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the election campaign, President Rajapaksa vowed to remove Pay\n As You Earn (PAYE) and Withholding taxes and amend the existing Inland \nRevenue Act in order to remove the heavy tax burden imposed on the \ngeneral public.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also vowed to slash the VAT to 8% and reduce the income taxes for \nthe manufacturing sector and to make religious places exempt from all \ntaxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Ada Derana The Cabinet has given its approval to remove the Nation Building Tax (NBT), Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Tax and Withholding Tax on interests, the Co-Cabinet Spokesperson Bandula Gunawardena said today. He mentioned this during the first press briefing to announce the decisions of the new government\u2019s Cabinet of Ministers, held at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692","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=95692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}