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| Sunday, 14 August 2005 |
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Adviser outlines new NGO tax imposition by Don Asoka Wijewardena All non-governmental organisations except those operating in the North and East would be required to pay tax at 30 per cent on a taxable income computed,at 6 per cent on grants receipts, in keeping with the 2005 budjet said Adviser to Ceylon Tobbaco, Bank of Ceylon and Partner Ernst and Young Lakmali Nanayakkara at a media conference on Introducing EYe Toolkit for Building Proper Systems of Control for Humanitarian Aid Resourcing and Delivery at the Ceylon Continental Hotel on Tuesday. Ms. Nanayakkara said that following the tsunami devastation, Ernst and Young developed the EYe Toolkit to help those providing humanitarian aid to establish a proper system of transparency and accountability and internal control within organisations and added that the key features of the EYe Toolkit were aimed at maintaining an effective humanitarian aid resource and faultless delivery framework and overview discussion on the importance of internal controls and their application in humanitarian aid efforts. Referring to the tax imposition on NGOs,Ms.Nanayakkara explained that from April 1,2005 the law enacted by the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Act taxable income 3 per cent of money received by way of grants, donations, contributions or other means on or after April 1, 2005, all NGOs other than those specifically excluded by the Commissioner General of Inland Revenue or Minister would be required to comply with the law. Ms. Nanayakkara said that tax for the first year 2005/2006 would be due on September 30,2006 with additional 0.25 per cent of the tax payable as "social responsibility levy". The new NGO tax imposition was in addition to any other tax paid by the NGOs such as tax on interest income and business profits. Regarding the exclusion of some NGOs, Ms. Nanayakkara said that in accordance with the Inland Revenue Act the Commissioner General of Inland Revenue had been empowered to remit the tax charged on the NGO with an assurance that such NGO would be solely engaged in rehabilitation and the provision of infrastructure facilities and livelihood support to displaced persons in an area identified by the State and any other activity approved by the respective Minister as being of humanitarian nature and gravity of any disaster and magnitude of relief consequently required to be provided. Director Communications for and Associate Partner in Indonesia's largest Professional Services Organisations Adlai Goldberg said that the EYe Toolkit was intended to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of NGOs operational activities as it included humanitarian aid resource and delivery framework,description of activity and the functions involved, appropriate internal controls for each of those processes and a key control and what can go wrong list of each. Referring to the positive advantages of the EYe Toolkit for NGOs,
Goldberg said that the EYe Toolkit would be extremely useful to any NGO
varying from a simple to complex type of operational structure as it would
provide a scalable system of internal controls for any NGO which could
select the relevant modules that would best fit its requirements through the
use of a pick list. |
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