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FTZ Union requests Govt. to collar bigtime tax evaders

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The Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees’ Union (FTZ&GSEU) has made a call to take immediate action on companies that have become VAT and income tax defaulters, rather than increasing the indirect tax burden on the public.

In a letter to all MPs, the FTZ&GSEU says the following factors were revealed in a Parliament speech by MP Mahindananda Aluthgamage on Sep. 20.

  • Only 25,692 companies have paid taxes out of 100,005 business companies that have income tax files opened. Accordingly, 74,313 companies have defrauded in paying due taxes.
  • Out of the 60,721 enterprises registered for VAT only 185 have paid VAT charged from customers by September to the government. This means the remaining 60,536 enterprises have kept for themselves the VAT charged from customers.
  • Income tax has not been paid by a leading businessman who owns a popular chain of garment outlets and also by a businessman owning a popular supermarket chain.
  • Income tax is not paid by 75 MPs.

“Whatever the motive was for MP Aluthgamage to expose these defrauds, in a country where indirect tax total 83 percent, it is the general public who end up carrying this huge burden of tax defaults in billions of rupees by corrupt businessmen. People have been made to undergo all hardships due to these defaults with no government taking effective measures to recover defaulted tax money with surcharges from those who defraud. Instead of recovering defaulted tax money with penalties from corrupt defrauding businessmen, governments impose and increase indirect taxes on people who thus become unnecessarily punished,” the letter adds.

The FTZ&GSEU further urges the MPs to take the following measures in this regard :

  • Request the Minister of Finance to present a detailed report to Parliament including the names of businessmen who are related to tax frauds mentioned above, before the next budget is presented in parliament and also adopt resolutions in parliament to,
  • Immediately suspend the income tax imposed on personal incomes of one hundred thousand rupees (100,000) and above, until a final decision is taken by the NLAC on information provided by the ministry of finance on tax defrauds and
  • Remove the total VAT imposed on essential consumer goods and suspend the social security contribution levy of 2.5 percent in force with effect from the 01 st October 2022.

The complete letter of the FTZ&GSEU is as follows :

BIZ

Standard egg prices to be announced daily via SMS

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Chairman of the All-Ceylon Egg Producers’ Association, R.M. Sarath Rathnayake has said new measures to announce daily standardized egg prices will be introduced from next Monday (June 23) to ensure fair pricing for consumers.

The prices covering wholesale, retail, and intermediary rates will be communicated daily at 5.00am via SMS to small, medium, and large-scale egg producers, as well as bakery owners, food manufacturers, and hotels through the number 070-7030700.

He warned of recent practices where eggs were bought at Rs.15-18 and stockpiled, stating such actions will no longer be tolerated.

He also criticized groups posing as “egg associations” without actual farming experience.

The cost of producing an egg is around Rs.28 for large farms, Rs.29-30 for medium range farms, and Rs.32 for small-scale producers, he further said.

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16 bn. Apple, Facebook, Google passwords exposed

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A staggering 16 billion passwords to Apple, Facebook, Google, and various US government services have been leaked online, triggering global security alerts in what experts are calling the most significant data breach in history.

The mammoth security breach has forced Google to urge billions of users to change their passwords immediately.

At the same time, the FBI has issued warnings to Americans about opening suspicious links in SMS messages.

Cybersecurity experts at Cybernews, who investigated the breach, discovered a whopping 30 exposed datasets containing between tens of millions and over 3.5 billion records each.

Perhaps most alarmingly, researchers confirmed that nearly all these exposed datasets contain previously unreported information, making this an entirely fresh security crisis.

“This is not just a leak – it’s a blueprint for mass exploitation,” the researchers said via Forbes this week.

(news.com.au)

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New chairman appointed to CSE

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Dimuthu Abeyesekera has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE).

The CSE announced that Mr. Abeyesekera brings over 35 years of experience in the capital markets and has served on the CSE Board for the past six years.

He currently serves as the Director/CEO of Asha Securities Ltd, which is affiliated with Phillip Capital Singapore, a specialized financial services organization managing assets worth over US$ 35 billion with a network of offices around the world.

Abeysekera also currently serves as the Director at Asha Financial Services Ltd, a specialised margin Trading Company in Colombo.

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