The Hon. Gayantha Karunathilleka
Gayantha Karunathilleka questioned whether the Government had implemented promised tax relief, including removing VAT on school supplies, books, and medicines, despite having a two-thirds majority and more than 100 days in office. He argued that the Rs. 4,000 allowance for public servants was inadequate compared to the Rs. 15,000 requested by the Sri Lanka Administrative Service, and criticized the taxation of interest income, including the increase of Withholding Tax from 5% to 10%, as inconsistent with the Government’s stated commitment to senior citizens.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Do not cut my time.
¶ 02 Even if it was in your Policy Statement, have you removed VAT on school supplies and books? Have you removed taxes on medicines? You have two-thirds. Over 100 days have passed. The Rs. 4,000 special allowance to public servants is not enough. The Sri Lanka Administrative Service asked for Rs. 15,000. And it’s not free — it will be offset in increments, and you are taxing 4.2% interest; similarly, taxing deposit interest. You said “Honouring Senior Citizens for a Meaningful Retirement” — how?
¶ 03 We are watching. Withholding Tax has been increased from 5% to 10%. This is how you honour seniors.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 9 January 2025 ·No. 1738229262040729 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/23796
Cite as: The Hon. Gayantha Karunathilleka. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 January 2025. No. 1738229262040729. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/23796