Sri Lanka planning to cut withholding tax on interest to help retirees: Minister

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property InsertPostAds::$settings is deprecated in /home/youthcey/public_html/wp-content/plugins/insert-post-ads/insert-post-ads.php on line 425

[[{“value”:”

ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka is planning to lift withholding tax on interest income below 100,000 a month to help older citizens who depend on interest income as interest rates fall, State Minister for Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said.

With deposit rates falling to around 9 percent from an earlier 16 percent, elderly persons who depend on interest get less income, Minister Siyambalapitiya said.

“We are now planning to put in place a mechanism to lift withholding tax from retirees who earn interest below 1,000 rupees a month,” he said in statement.

It is likely to cost up to 40 billion rupees to pay interest subsidies to banks to give senior citizens interest of 16 percent when market rates fall.

The government still owed banks interest subsidies on previous years senior citizen interest subsidies, Siyambalapitiya told opposition leader Sajith Premadasa in parliament Thursday.

“We are still paying this money every month,” he said. “We are looking at this based on the cashflows that we have. As a first step we are looking at the withholding tax.

“As we are paying the old subsidies how can we start a new one. These days the Treasury takes decisions carefully. We have seen the situations we had to fact after sudden careless decisions taken in the past.”

“}]]Read More 

​ 

[[{“value”:” ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka is planning to lift withholding tax on interest income below 100,000 a month to help older citizens who depend on…

[[{“value”:” ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka is planning to lift withholding tax on interest income below 100,000 a month to help older citizens who depend on…