Furthermore, the SHTA believes that the amendment of the existing legislation should have ONLY reflected the change from 3-5% along with the adjusted exemption items. The fact that other articles were altered and that the process to approve the legislation had been rushed without proper dialogue, left the SHTA with no choice but to comment publicly.
The SHTA understands that it is not the intention of the Minister of Finance to implement an import duty (it was an oversight) and that a corrective law will be issued, however if there is no follow up and the correction is not published, the legislation for an import duty intermingled within the Turnover Tax legislation will hold.
The SHTA believes that this confusion could have been avoided had the Ministry met with stakeholders to review the draft legislation before publishing it. It is for this reason that the SHTA is again reiterating the need for closer cooperation between public and private sector even more so now with the vast task ahead of designing a new tax structure for 2012.
The SHTA would also like to clarify that while Paul van Vliet through PWC is a member of the SHTA, he has not held a position on the Board of the SHTA for the past 3 ½ years.
