Income tax

It is very clear at present that the new income tax net cast by the Ranil Wickremesinghe government has provoked a situation that may well become unmanageable and ominous signs of this are clearly emerging. Strident protests from groups including doctors, university academics and others including port and airport employees and many others have been becoming increasingly strident over the past several days. Hints of direct trade union action, obviously meaning strikes, have been made. Whether a government, already on the back foot following Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF) Convenor Vasantha Mudalige’s release on bail and angry public opinion railing against blatant efforts to postpone the scheduled local elections. can fend off the tax protests remains to be seen.

All those protesting on this account well know that the government is desperately cash strapped and needs to urgently harness revenue to keep the wheels of state turning. On its part, the government also is too well aware of the inability of most of the protesters to bear the new income tax burden in the face of galloping inflation, particularly food, electricity and a host of other goods and services are concerned. But there is very little that it can do about it. Wickremesinghe’s and his government’s obdurate refusal to abandon or cut down on Saturday’s 75^th Independence anniversary bash, said to have cost Rs. 200 million, has only aggravated public fury about the new income tax burden placed upon the people.

The very small number of personal income tax payers in this country have always felt unfairly treated, believing they have been singled out for harsh treatment while the vast majority remained untouched. They could not be more wrong. All the people of the country pay taxes and how! As one famous newspaper editor of the past pungently put it, “every time you strike a match or flush the toilet, you are paying a tax.” We all know the platitude that the only thing that is certain in life is death and taxes. Indirect taxes unlike those that are direct (like income tax) by far account for the lion’s share of tax revenue. Populations of developed countries, particularly in Europe and North America, pay high income taxes. But they, unlike us in Sri Lanka, get good returns for what they pay. We, in this land like no other, can only grin cynically when we see signs proclaiming “Your tax rupees at work” at road digs and construction sites and think “like hell” to ourselves.

Equity is a basic principle of taxation long ignored in this country. Go back to 1977 and the early years of opening our long shackled economy by the J.R. Jayewardene government with Ronnie de Mel as finance minister. That was when public service emoluments were freed of income tax on the argument that top public servants were paid much less than their private sector counterparts and this hindered government’s ability to hold competent managers in the public sector hierarchy. The contention was not altogether without merit but there were many fallacies as well. Public servants from the colonial days have enjoyed non-contributory pensions which is not the case (with very few exceptions) in the private sector. Dr. N.M. Perera, as finance minister in Mrs. Bandaranaike’s United Front government of 1970 tried, without success, to withdraw the pension benefits from new entrants to the public service. He sensibly proposed that they be paid a retirement benefit like what is offered by the EPF to private sector employees with contributions from both employer and employee. The failure of this effort has left a ticking time bomb on the taxpayer’s lap to this day.

At a post-budget press conference following freeing public sector salaries from income tax, then Finance Minister De Mel was asked whether parliamentary emoluments too would be similarly exempted. He ducked the question saying “that hasn’t been decided yet.” Of course the benefit was extended to MPs too. Cabinet Spokesman Bandula Gunawardene told a post-cabinet news briefing a few days ago said that the IMF wanted all those earning Rs. 45,000 a month to be made liable to income tax. The government tried its best to push it to a monthly Rs. 150,000 and finally settled at Rs. 100,000. There were those who didn’t believe the minister on the premise that an institution like the IMF would not have got into micro details but would have broadly prescribed a percentage of GDP that must be gathered as tax revenue. However it wasn’t long before the president himself confirmed Gunawardene’s claim.

There’s no avoiding the reality that Sri Lanka’s income tax base is far too narrow and needs to be widened substantially. This would mean that people who have never paid income tax would caught up in the tax net and would deeply resent being compelled to pay. This is particularly so in the context of the value of money reducing sharply, most so in recent months. The country is also saddled with an Inland Revenue Department entrenched in a tradition of harassing already squeezed lemons to increase tax collection in a society where evasion is widely prevalent, often among professionals who should know better. The government must also be cognizant of the untaxed, lavish non-cash benefits of politicians deeply resented by the people. However that be, whether the government will be allowed to implement the announced scheme or be compelled to backpedal remains to be seen.