Tax collection from salaried class doubled

Kabul, September 5, 2006 (Pajhwok Afghan News) - Despite conflicts in several non-governmental organs on taxes on salaried class, two-fold increase have been registered in collection of revenues from such taxes in five months this year as compared with the last year, officials said on Tuesday.

Ilhamudin Mazhar, head of the Income Tax Department in Finance Ministry, told Pajhwok Afghan News all governmental organs and mostly of the non-government organs had joined the scheme on salaries taxes.

Government had got 230 million afghanis from taxes on salaries much greater amount that was predicted.

However, only 128 million afghanis were recovered in six months in last year, he added. The law suggests that all employees of governmental and non-governmental organs should pay taxes from March 2005.

According to the law the employees getting salaries less than 12,500 are not liable to pay taxes. However, the employees drawing salaries more than 12,500 afghanis will have to pay 10 percent taxes. Likewise, 8,750 afghanis would be deducted of 0.1 million afghanis and 20% more from salary that is exceeding 0.1 million afghanis.

He said 800 companies had so far paid taxes from salaries of their staffers and hoped the ratio would further increase.

Shikeb Noori, public relations officer of Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA), said over 6,000 private companies were registered with them. Shah Aqa Ebad, official in economy ministry, said they had registered over 1,000 NGOs.

However, Mazhar said some of the registered companies were not functional and there were some companies who paid fewer amount of salaries that could not be considered to pay taxes.

He said they would not renew the licenses of the companies that don't have taxes payment documents. They had formed a committee from Finance, Economy and Interior Ministries to identify the companies that were not obeying this tax law and would take disciplinary against them. He said the punishments were including closure of the companies, fined of 2.5 million afghanis and two years imprisonment. The companies will have to pay fine if failed to deposit taxes in ten day.

Hamidullah Farooqi, professor of Economics at Kabul University, told this news agency that the revenues collected from different organisations showed the amount was too little as compared with the number of the institutions. He said lots of people were drawing handsome salaries from NGOs but government was weak to collect taxes from them.