Leading business and investor associations are lobbing criticisms at the value-added tax (VAT) legislation. The VAT will make life difficult for investors, said Hassan Ratib, deputy head of the Egyptian Union of Investors Associations, literally hauling out the “goose that lays the golden egg” metaphor. Federation of Egyptian Industries head Mohamed El Sewedy said the tax will fail to bring the informal economy into the tax system and reiterated the FEI’s call that the EGP 500K mandatory minimum income level for registering for the VAT be scrapped. Mohamed El Bahay, head of the FEI’s taxation committee, tells Al Mal that the FEI will lobby the House of Representatives to amend the legislation. Ahmed Sheeha, head of the Importers Division of the Cairo Chambers of Commerce, implied that the VAT runs contrary to promises to draw in new investments. Ali Eissa, head of the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association, called for the minimum threshold required for registration be abolished so that a comprehensive taxation record be established.

Finance Minister Amr El Garhy is set to appear before a House committee on Tuesday in hearings on the VAT, as will representatives from the FEI, export councils and chambers of commerce, according to unnamed sources in the planning and budget committee speaking to Daily News Egypt on Tuesday. A request was reportedly submitted to El Garhy to have the ministry set the tax value in the draft law, as well as submit the tables of the general sales tax law from the Tax Authority. The finance ministry had previously suggested a baseline of 14%, but had left the decision up to the House.

Enterprise hates taxes. There, we said it. We’re capitalist, profit-loving scum who enjoy paying our staff living wages. Every penny paid in tax eats into that. But we wonder: What’s going to pay for the social safety net? What’s going to continue to build public infrastructure? Aren’t public finances every bit as important as our own? And if the VAT is a measure we all [redacted] know the IMF is going to demand — and if we agree the IMF facility is one of the keys to getting the economy moving again — then what would the chattering class suggest the Ismail government do? Our present tax system is rife with corruption and leaky as a sieve. Who among us, at the retail level, hasn’t been told we’ll need to pay an extra 10% if we “want a tax invoice”?

If not at VAT, then what? The train has left the station, folks. The question is not should we have a VAT, it’s can we implement it in a way that’s fair to all, and maximally fair to low income earners? Rather than growling about its inflationary impact or demanding some shopkeeper (who makes in a year what one of us spends on a vacation) be included in the system, shouldn’t we be talking constructively with Finance about how to best implement the measure? The VAT is coming to Egypt, as it has to nearly every country on the planet except for the United States. (Check out this infographic from the New York Times, and forgive it its error: It includes Egypt as having a VAT in 2009.)