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Decentralization of Tax in the Offing

  2 min 8 sec to read

July 11: The government is planning to collect taxes, non-tax revenue and royalties from all three tiers of the administration – center, province and local units – in order to implement federalism. The government plans to empower the local units and enable them to manage their own source of income through a bill on finance management, which has been presented to the parliament.

The bill proposes distribution of royalties collected from mountaineering, forests, electricity and mines at all three levels. According to the bill, the central government will claim 85 percent royalties while the provincial government will get 10 percent royalties and the local government will have its share of 5 percent royalties.

If the bill gets endorsed, the centralized taxation system will become decentralized. Analysts, however, are skeptical that the decentralized taxation system will be beneficial for the nation.

‘It sounds simple but adopting decentralized taxation system could result in financial irregularities in countries like ours,” said one analyst who did not wished to be named. “Therefore, it is important to be cautious,” he added.

The local elections held in two phases so far have already elected local representatives in most of the local units except in Province 2 and some disputed constituencies.

The bill on inter-governmental finance management, which is currently in discussion in the Parliament, proposes giving authority to the elected local bodies to rightfully collect taxes, non-tax revenues, other charges and royalties as per the laws.

Clause 3 of the bill states that the local units can collect property tax, rent tax, land tax, land and house registration fee, vehicle tax, entertainment tax, advertisement tax, business tax and hoarding board tax.

According to the bill, the local government can also impose service charge, tourism charge, parking charge, rental charge, herbs and wildlife charge as well as other non-tax revenue as per the need.

The bill also mentions the taxes that the provincial government and the central government shall collect. The provincial government is authorized to collect taxes on registration of houses and lands as well as entertainment, advertisement, agriculture, income, road construction and maintenance, ticket charge among others. In addition to that, the provincial government can also collect non-tax revenue and tourism charge.

The central government on the other hand will collect customs duty, excise duty, value added tax, income tax, labour charge, social security tax, health service tax, infrastructure tax, agriculture development charge, pollution charge, education service tax, road maintenance and development tax among others.

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