The quintet committee affiliated with the parliamentary planning and budget committee asked the Ministry of Finance to further study the value-added tax (VAT) draft law, requesting that the ministry decide the tax value and submit data for the general sales tax law.
A number of demands were submitted to the Ministry of Finance, including deciding the tax value in the draft law, sending the tables of the general sales tax law from the Egyptian Tax Authority, and clarifying the difference between the tables applied to the present general sales tax law and those to the VAT draft law, member of the quintet committee Hisham Abdel Wahid said.
The committee asked for a detailed table listing the goods and services as well as the tax value applied on them under the present general sales tax law in order to show the differences between the tax values of both laws, he added.
The quintet committee, made up of Hisham Abdel Wahid, Talaat Khalil, Silvia Nabil, Mervat Aleksan, and Esmat Zayed, will hold a meeting next Thursday to study the bill and develop an action plan for the coming period. The committee will compile reports and submit them to the other committees in the parliament.
Abdel Wahid said that the committee will employ a group of tax experts and economists either from the parliament or outside.
Sources in the planning and budget committee have demanded that Minister of Finance Amr El-Garhy present a detailed statement about the structure of the entity responsible for implementing the VAT law.
The committee will demand hearing sessions next Tuesday attended by El-Garhy, his assistant for tax policies Amr El-Monir, the Public Taxes Authority, all export councils, the Federation of Industries (FEI), and chambers of commerce, according to the sources.
They added that the Ministry of Finance promised to send such statements to the parliament within the framework of transparency between state institutions and to set the project law for social debate.
