Cairo -

“The crisis is not in the law, but in a lie,” this is how a loyal parliamentarian accused the Egyptian government during a session to discuss a bill to amend some provisions of the Value Added Tax Law promulgated by Law No. 67 of 2016, in reference to its repeated denials of not imposing any taxes and burdens. New money for citizens.

Although the law was eventually passed, as is customary - as the House of Representatives approved all government amendments last Tuesday - the session witnessed heated discussions that reverberated on the media and social media, in light of the many Egyptians affected by the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, which cost them a lot.

A number of opposition MPs and those affiliated with the government attacked its continued policies of imposing new taxes on citizens without a ceiling. Representative Abdel Moneim Imam addressed the Minister of Finance, "I read your statements about citizen support.

But the most severe comment was made by MP Mahmoud Badr, who is loyal to the authority, accusing it of lying, saying, “At the time when the Media Center of the Council of Ministers announced 10 days ago, on the words of the Minister of Finance, that there are no new tax burdens on the citizen, we are surprised by a law that is being prepared (which is being prepared). Hastily) and we agree to it and impose it on the people with a new tax increase.. Either the Cabinet and its media center are lying to the Egyptians, or it is the finances that are lying.”

He continued, "I reject the law because it does not have any political or humanitarian sense in the ministry when it imposes new tax burdens in light of the inflation crisis and the increase in prices. People do not know where to find them or where (you face prices from any direction), from gas bills, or from electricity, or from whom. The increase in the prices of consumer goods, which have increased in the recent period, is in fact unacceptable logic."

In a related context, the Parliament’s Plan and Budget Committee approved the Prime Minister’s decision to amend some provisions of the stamp tax law promulgated by Law No. 111 of 1980, Law No. 147 of 1984 imposing a fee for developing the state’s financial resources, and Law No. 74 of 1999 imposing a return-entry tax theaters and other amusement parks.

Ask the government why do you take real estate taxes on factories?

Factories are a productive economic activity for which income taxes, stamps, sales, solidarity and earning a job are paid.. What does this have to do with real estate?

Ask the government why the license of the smallest factory in Egypt must be renewed every year with a renewal fee of more than 11 thousand pounds?

— Mohamed ElSherif (@MhdElsherif) December 15, 2021

Taxes.. as an advertisement for high prices

The amendments included increasing taxes on many goods and services, for example;

Salmon fish, fresh, chilled or frozen salmon fillets, shrimps, lobster, blue-veined cheeses included in the tariff heading, soap products, detergents and advertising services at a value of 14%.

As well as fruits, whether fresh or dried, included in customs tariff items, roasted coffee, chocolate, perfumes, cosmetics, toys, 2% of the value of durable goods, 5% of the final value of soft drinks and subjecting e-commerce transactions to a tax of 14%, By implementing a simplified registration and collection system instead of the current system.

Other opposition MPs accused the government of financing the budget deficit from the pockets of citizens, and MP Ahmed Salam Al-Sharqawi considered the new taxes as "an announcement of high prices from tomorrow." The wheel of collecting money from the pockets of the Egyptians.

In the interest of the citizen

While the government and the majority of its supporters defended the new amendments as increasing the exempted categories, supporting the national industry, and even as usual in the interest of the citizen, solving the problems of the Egyptian economy, and increasing the state’s financial resources, as they included exemptions that affect vital sectors and take into account the social dimension, they said.

Including exempting sewage services, feed preparations, additives and concentrates, paper industry production inputs, and raw tablets intended for coinage, and exempting services performed by the Suez Canal Authority for ships transiting through it, including transit fees, in addition to exemptions related to the medicine, serums and vaccines sector, and blood and its derivatives. As well as exempting medicines, and exempting active substances used in the production of medicines based on a decision issued by the Minister of Health.

In this context, the Secretary of the Industry Committee in the House of Representatives, Shehata Abu Zeid, praised these amendments, which came in accordance with the directives of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, stressing that "the main objective of these amendments is to relieve the burdens of citizens... Also, these exemptions will contribute to encouraging local industry. National,” he said.

Unusual media attack

Anger over the amendments to the law spilled over from Parliament to the media;

As the pro-regime journalist Ahmed Moussa attacked the new taxes, he said, "We talked before that and said that we do not need to impose new burdens on the citizen, because he can no longer bear it." It is boiled (cooked in a hurry).

Unusually, Moussa dropped the government’s point of view, and added - during his program “On My Responsibility” on “Echo of the Country” channel - “It is not permissible to approach the citizen’s pocket in every matter, and it is not true that after increasing wages, they are obtained on the other hand.” ...he is in (how much) fifty pounds in the employee's salary, so that we (even) impose new burdens on him."

The pioneers of social media from the tax amendments had a share of criticism and attacks on the government, demanding the need to stop imposing more taxes that greatly exhausted all citizens and did not take into account social justice.

At the end of last November, the Egyptian House of Representatives approved the decision of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to amend some categories of the customs tariff. The decision included imposing a fee of 10% on mobile phones, bringing the total taxes imposed on phones after this increase to about 35%, On the pretext of protecting the national industry, although Egypt is a country that does not produce mobile phones, except in a small scale.

#They said


Finance Minister Mohamed Maait: We imposed a 10% customs tax on imported mobiles, to stimulate their manufacture locally pic.twitter.com/CfQDQQyvu8

— Economy Plus (@EconomyPlusAR) November 29, 2021

Taxes doubled about 400%.

Taxes, fees and stamps of all kinds (mainly value-added tax) are the largest resource for the state treasury, and the Ministry of Finance aims to increase the tax proceeds during the next fiscal year by 18.3%, at a value of 983 billion pounds (about 62.8 billion dollars), and constitute about 75% of the total expected state revenues. 1.3 trillion pounds (about 83 billion dollars).

The state’s tax revenues have increased sharply over the past few years, especially after the liberalization of the pound exchange rate at the end of 2016, and increased from about 251 billion pounds in 2013 to 983 billion pounds in 2021, meaning that it has doubled at least 4 times since that date, ( One dollar equals 15.75 pounds.

The government denied its intention to raise taxes

The Egyptian government has repeatedly stated that “there is no intention to impose new taxes,” and it denied all news related to the matter, and considered it as rumours, the latest of which was in early December, when it denied what was circulated by some websites and social media pages regarding the government’s intention to add new tax burdens. citizens during the coming period, coinciding with the global inflation crisis.

And in September 2021, the Media Center of the Council of Ministers revealed that, in light of the reports that the Ministry of Finance intends to impose new taxes on citizens to increase the state’s public revenues, the Center communicated with the Ministry of Finance, which denied these reports, stressing that there is no truth to imposing new taxes. Citizens to increase the state's public revenues.

In the same month, the Minister of Finance confirmed that there is no intention to impose new taxes, but rather there are persistent efforts to collect the dues of the state’s public treasury, by strengthening governance, raising the efficiency of tax collection, and expanding the tax base by integrating the informal economy into the formal economy, through the expansion of technological solutions. .

Egypt suffers from a high rate of poverty, as there are about 30 million poor people, representing 29.7% of the population, and about 5 million living in extreme poverty, at a rate of 4.5%, according to official statistics for the year (2019-2020), and it certainly does not include the severe effects of the Corona virus pandemic, which It greatly affected the majority of citizens.