SJB warns of further tax increases

Chief Opposition Whip and Kandy District SJB MP Lakshman Kiriella says that there will be further tax increases under the current dispensation.

Speaking at a rally in Watteg-ama, Kandy, on Sunday, Kiriella said: “The Gota-baya Rajapaksa government, too, was responsible for the situation. When we formed a government in 2015, the World Bank instructed us to increase state revenue. We found that big companies evaded taxes. They did so by declaring only 25 percent of their actual income. Thus, the then Finance Minister was instructed to tax those companies. By doing so we earned Rs 800 billion in a year. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in his government’s first Budget, did away with that

tax and lost Rs 800 billion as a result. Couple of months later, there was the COVID pandemic and we were left without money to purchase medicine. Since then the governments have lived on nothing but taxes.

Kiriella said the SJB had learnt that the government was planning to burden the public with further tax and tariff increases.