Income may be less than projected due to budget reduction: MIRA

Maldives Inland Revenue Authority (MIRA) has said that the income to the State via MIRA will not be as much as projected, due to the hindrances to its work as a result of the huge reduction in the budget for the institution for this year.

Commissioner General of Taxation Mohamed Yazeed told Sun Online that the budget for MIRA after a huge reduction is MVR39 million, which is barely sufficient to cover the institution’s recurrent expenses. He said that five percent had been deducted from salaries and 70 percent had been deducted from programs planned for the year, and that this would result in the institution not being able to collect due tax money.

“The budget is barely enough for us to open and close the office. We don’t have money to do anything else. The budget has been deducted completely for next year’s programs. So we no longer expect to collect the projected income. Lack of budget means MIRA can’t do the necessary to collect money. We expect income to be lower by 30 percent than projected,” he said.

MIRA’s budget for last year was MVR76 million. The budget proposed and sent to Finance Ministry by MIRA for this year was MVR75 million, but the budget forwarded to the Parliament by Finance Ministry was for MVR62 million.

Yazeed said that the programs planned to educate the public in relation to income tax and other tax issues cannot be implemented due to the reduction of the budget.

“What we can do is pay our employees their salaries and open and close the office, we can’t do anything to increase revenue or educate the public on the tax system. The budget has been almost entirely declined,” he said.

MIRA had requested the Budget Committee to increase the budget for the office even when the budget was under review by the committee.

Ninety percent of the state’s income is collected through MIRA. Up until November last year, MIRA had collected MVR141.5 million as income for the State.

The MVR16.9 billion budget proposed to Parliament was reduced to MVR15.3 billion by cutting down several recurrent expenditures, which included reductions in budgets for purchasing assets for offices and operational expenses of offices.

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) also said yesterday that it will not be able to work due to the reduction in the budget. ACC President Hassan Luthfee also said that the only thing ACC can do with this year’s budget is open and close the office.