Angolan Finance Minister Vera Daves revealed in an interview with TPA that in 2021 the country will levy new taxes and expand the scope of collection.She said that despite the current complex economic situation in the country, implementing this measure is not what the government wants.
In the past two years, crude oil has been the main source of revenue for the Angolan State budget. In view of the drop in oil prices, the Angolan government has adopted a number of fiscal measures to solve the imbalance of international payments.Such as strengthening the tax base management and levying new taxes to increase income outside the oil industry.
Vera Daves said that all these fiscal measures are aimed at "saving the country." Since 2014, the country has fallen into a severe economic and financial crisis.These taxes are basically to pay the salaries of workers in the public sector. Without these taxes, it would be "disastrous."
Regarding personal income tax, the threshold for taxpayers has been raised. Salaries below 70,000 kwanzas are tax-exempt. In the past, wages above 34,000 kwanzas were taxable.The second is value-added tax. The value-added tax payment in the field of agricultural investment has been reduced from 14% to 5% in order to balance the taxation mechanism and increase the level of national production, private investment and employment.
Vera Daves mentioned that the proposal of deducting 2.5% of fees when conducting transactions on ATMs belongs to the category of value-added tax and is not a new tax.This measure has been included in the "2021 National Budget Proposal" and approved by Congress on Tuesday, aimed at "combating tax evasion" and other crimes.
Vera Daves explained that the 2.5% value added tax is deducted to prevent those who should pay 14% value added tax actually only pay 11.5%. Therefore, the implementation of this measure can effectively prevent the possibility of tax evasion.