Finance State Minister Shehan Semasinghe told Parliament yesterday (13) that the Public Finance Management Bill will be introduced next year and that the existing structural weaknesses will be identified and the Bill will be adopted in this Parliament in accordance with internationally accepted standards.
The State Minister said this yesterday joining the parliamentary debate on the budget of the Finance Ministry.
Minister Semasinghe said the list of goods subject to VAT will be published separately on the website of the Ministry of Finance in the next few weeks. The State Minister said that the work is currently being done by the officials of the Finance Ministry.
Commenting on that, the minister said, specific list of goods on how to collect VAT for each item on the website of the Finance Ministry in the next few weeks will be published. The State Minister also said that in this year’s budget, special attention has been paid to expanding the tax network. He said that the country’s tax administration should be strengthened.
In 2019, the number of registered VAT documents was 28,914 but this year the limit of documents is 13,142. He said that this is not good and everyone should be made to pay fair taxes.
Commenting on that, the minister said that one of the main issues the country needs to focus on is tax administration. Until this economic crisis, no government paid attention to tax administration. Tax administration in this country should be greatly strengthened. So far, the government has not paid much attention to this issue. But attention has now been focused on strengthening the tax network. But that situation should be strengthened. The personal relationship between the taxpayer and the tax administration should be removed and for that purpose the digital system will be introduced in the future, he said.