20/03/2018
6069 times read
20/03/2018
6069 times read
Approval of National Assembly awaited KUWAIT CITY, March 20: Ministry of Finance has postponed the preparations for enforcement of Value Added Tax (VAT) until it is approved by the National Assembly, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting informed sources. They explained that the current situation is not favorable for the implementation of VAT within a short period. Ministry of Finance is not sure that the law related to enforcement of VAT will be passed by the parliament due to which the ministry took the abovementioned decision. Preparations for VAT implementation require a large amount of money especially for preparing the accounting systems and appointing tens of new employees as well as organizing a number of training courses for the current employees. They affirmed that continuing the above mentioned procedures for readiness to implement VAT will be useless and just a waste of money if the parliament continues to stick to its current stance in rejecting the enforcement of VAT due to its negative impacts on citizens. The sources indicated that, even if the VAT law is approved this year, VAT will not be implemented before 2020, as Ministry of Finance has to be technically and administratively prepared, which will take at least one year. However, they stressed that Ministry of Finance is working on developing the tax sector based on its 2015/2019 strategy which involves the use of advanced applications and administration tools with the cooperation of Kuwait International Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).