10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake

New Democratic Front· National List· 8 July 2025 ·Debate: Debate: Imports and Exports (Control) Act - Salt Import Regulations (Gazette No. 2437/04)

Public Finance
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Ravi Karunanayake questioned the Minister on the VAT treatment of Uber’s operations in Sri Lanka, comparing it with PickMe’s payment of 18 percent VAT on invoice value. He asked whether Uber would be taxed on the full service value or only on the locally collected transport fee portion, and sought clarification on whether the Government would act against what he described as tax avoidance through structuring.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, the Hon. Minister has been delinquent in getting the message across. My question is this, Hon. Minister: Uber wants to pay VAT in Sri Lanka. Is it on the value added here, or on the full service? PickMe pays 18 percent on the invoice value. But Uber proposes to pay only on the 10 percent transport fee portion collected locally out of, say, Rs. 100,000 delivered value. They are trying to avoid tax by structuring. Will you act, or accept it?

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 8 July 2025 ·No. 1752482630017444 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
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Permalink
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Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 8 July 2025. No. 1752482630017444. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/10917