Parliament approves amendments to Income Tax Law

CAIRO – 15 April 2018: Egypt’s Parliament finally approved on Sunday amendments to some provisions of the Income Tax Law no. 95 of 2005.

The amendments are related to two articles of the law. They would push the deadline for submitting supplementary documentation of the tax declaration.

People can now submit the supplementary documentation in 60 days after the expiration of the deadline assigned to present the declaration.

Finance Minister Amr el-Garhy said earlier this month that his ministry targets to increase taxes to 17-18 percent of GDP, up from the current 14 percent.

He added that Egypt has not sufficiently developed its taxing system in the past year, adding that the government is working on training employees in the Tax Authority.

As part of a $12 billion three-year loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Egypt clinched in late 2016, Cairo has been slashing energy subsidies and raising new taxes to attract investment.

A finance ministry statement outlining the draft budget saw tax revenues jumping to LE 770.28 billion in the new fiscal year 2018/19 from LE 624.20 billion in the current fiscal year.