Egypt Plans To Impose VAT On All Online Transactions
By Nada Hamouda
Egypt’s Tax Authority is actively studying imposing Value-added Tax (VAT) on online ad buys and e-commerce transactions. A move that would subject the online sale of goods and services to 14% value-added tax on both domestic players and global giants such as Google and Facebook.
According to Enterprise network, there’s still no exact details regarding how the tax could be collected from other sellers of programmatic ads. “The government hopes to bring in EGP 9-7 billion from settling tax disputes this fiscal year,” Tax Authority chief, Emad Samy, said.
However, the potential online VAT is still under discussion as part of the Finance Ministry’s plan to revamp the tax filing system for corporations in FY2019-20. Thus, the authority plans to speak with players in the industry to discuss the best mechanism to impose VAT on both ad buys and e-commerce sales.
According to the payments agency Payfort’s 2017 report, Egypt witnessed a 22 % annual growth in the total amount of online payments, estimated at $6.2 billion of transactions in 2016.
