Sri Lanka to crackdown on tax evaders

Sri Lanka's Inland Revenue Department will carry out islandwide raids on businesses to crack down on tax evasion, a local media report said Wednesday.

Commissioner General of the Inland Revenue Department, Kalyani Dahanayake, quoted in the media report said that the Department's aim was to widen the tax base and get people to pay their taxes.

"We will be going all over country even after office hours to get people not in the tax net to be brought in," she told a forum on the government's 2017 budget.

Sri Lanka's Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said the department had more than doubled the number of tax files since the new government came to power in January 2015, but many remained outside the tax net.

He said that while Sri Lanka's population consists of 23 million people, there were only 43,000 corporate tax files, 21,000 VAT files and 25,000 Nation Building Tax files.

These are only 9 percent of tax files compared to the population, he said.

"Isn't this disgraceful? Pay your due call and ask as much as you want from the government. But don't pay nothing and ask for everything," the Minister said.

"I have asked Inland Revenue, Customs, the Excise Department and the Treasury to be vigilant and go after everybody," he said. Enditem