Cabinet approves unified tax draft law

CAIRO - 27 June 2019: The Cabinet approved the draft unified tax law, taking into account the observations made by some ministers. The law came in 82 articles divided into 10 sections.

The draft Act regulates the procedures for linking and collecting income tax, value added tax, the development of the State's financial resources, the stamp duty, and any tax of a similar nature or substantially in accordance with or replacing these financial obligations.

The law aims to consolidate the provisions governing these procedures and facilitate their application, relying on modern technical means to take and treat tax procedures and adoptingrules that are flexibleand efficientin the termination of tax disputes.

The draft law dealt with a number of provisions, the most important of which were the rights and obligations of financiers, taxpayers and others; as well as the regulation of tax administration, the registration of financiers and taxpayers in the interest, tax returns and the obligation to submit them and the mechanism and dates for their submission. This is in addition to tax collection, other unpaid amounts, and tax appeal procedures.

The Egyptian Tax Authority started dealing with the unified tax registration number, and replacing all tax file numbers with the unified tax registration number on June 1, 2019.

The authority clarified that the unified tax registration number is dealt with in all tax assessments, and for all types of taxes, whether income taxes, value added or others, noting that this decision comes in light of the implementation of decision No. 729 of 2018 on the modernization of tax data. The decision was issued by Finance Minister Mohamed Ma’it.

The decision puts the tax registration number in place of the words "tax file" or "taxpayer file number" wherever it appears in a list or decision. It also cancels the reference to the tax file number or the taxpayer's file number in any correspondence, whether issued or received by the Tax Authority, and refers only to the registration number of the taxpayer or the taxpayer.