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Thursday, 27 December 2018

FinMin looking to automate stores’ sales disclosures, VAT owed to Tax Authority

EXCLUSIVE- FinMin looking to automate retailers’ disclosures of sales, VAT to Tax Authority: The Finance Ministry is looking to outfit major retailers, shopping malls, and auto showrooms with devices that would automatically the relay of sales data to the Tax Authority, a senior government official tells Enterprise. The move is designed to clamp down on tax evasion and the exceptionally common practice of keeping two sets of books and refusing to provide “tax receipts.”

The ministry has already tested the devices in a limited number of stores over the past year, and is now planning to issue a tender for 20k devices after the trial run proved successful. Increasing tax revenues has been a key policy for the ministry, which is planning to implement in May 2019 an electronic billing and tax payment platform to set a single tax ID number for companies to pay all their taxes, Minister Mohamed Maait had said.

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