Jihad: Tax system would be completed by taking income tax

Finance Minister Abdulla Jihadhas said that the taxation system introduced in the Maldives five year would be completed with the implementation of income tax.

Speaking at the budget committee today, Minister Jihad said that although the Government has not considered taking an income tax so far, the Government is doing a relevant research on the matter.

Minister Jihad said that the Government has considered taking an income tax from people who earn over MVR 100,000 per month.

“But there are very few people who can be taxed like that also. One way or the other, the Government is taking, for example from the trade tax, by trade tax from renting places. So we’re on the way to doing such researches. I won’t say it won’t happen in the future.” Minister Jihad said.

At the committee meeting today, Finance Minister Abdulla Jihad spoke on the bills to be paid by the Government.

He said that the Government has paid MVR one billion of the money in bills the Government owes to different people in this year. And to pay the unpaid bills, MVR 500 million is included in the budget for 2016 and said that it can be settled with a lower figure.

Speaking on the 2016 budget, Minister Jihad said that the Finance Ministry is now working to recover the money that was lost from the state according to the Auditor General’s report. And so a special committee has now been established and next year, the Government would be pushing harder on the task.

“Some of the things mentioned in the Audit Report are directly considered negligence. The Audit Report say when the financial law is broken, this happened this way. We have to firm that basis. It’s not the amount we thought to do that. So we are reading every report separately. We’ll read and decided how to proceed. With God’s will, in the year 2016, we will work on it in a faster pace than this.” Minister Jihad said.