Additional LE 50B tax revenues collected after VAT: official

CAIRO – 2 July 2017: “With the shift from sales tax to value - added tax (VAT), the Egyptian Tax Authority collected an additional LE 50 billion ($2.7 billion) and is endeavoring to go beyond target,” a Sunday statement read.

The head of the authority, Commissioner Emad Samy, said that a law was issued to resolve the current 160,000 tax disputes; as only 1,500 disputes were settled.
“The authority achieved the target revenues by the end of May and is working on other settlements to raise revenues beyond target by the end of the fiscal year for the first time in years,” Samy added.

Samy noted that the authority is working on streamlining the informal economy into the taxing system, primarily to collect outstanding taxes worth LE 70 billion, identify evading activities and issue a law for simple accounting and book keeping by small enterprises.

With tax revenues representing 70 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), Commissioner Samy called on the authority staff to exert every effort to support the Egyptian economy.

As a part of the Tax Authority development policy, two units were established, one to follow up on the development of the non-commercial occupations and the other for automated tax assessment.