The Ministry of Finance made amendments to various provisions of the Stamp Tax Law, which requires industrial companies to pay stamp taxes for natural gas consumptions directly to the relevant tax authorities during the first ten days of the next month, rather than repaying gas companies, said Minister of Finance Hany Kadry Dimian. "Ministerial Decree No. 330 of 2014 seeks to overcome the obstacles faced by oil sector in collecting debts in return for providing factories with natural gas," he added. Before the recent amendments, gas companies used to receive their debts from factories with an added natural gas consumption tax, and then supplied the stamp tax on behalf of the factories to the Egyptian Tax Authority (ETA), which resulted in many problems between the ETA and gas companies. A source at the Ministry of Finance said that the new decision would require that legal entities, the industrial factories, pay the tax owed to the tax office directly within the first 10 days of the next month and that gas companies receive payment only for the amount of natural gas that the factories consumed. However, gas companies will collect and supply taxes for natural persons' consumption only. The source continued: "Amendments to the stamp tax will ensure that taxes and fees owed are paid to the public treasury quickly." According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance on Monday morning, the decision obliges natural gas companies to notify companies and tax offices of the consumption and tax owed per month. ETA head Mostafa Abdel Qader said that the finance minister's decision aims to help gas companies that face difficulties in regularly collecting payment from industrial companies. Abdel Qader said that gas companies also find it difficult to pay the consumption tax on a monthly basis, as previous regulations resulted in many disagreements between EGPC and the ETA. He said "amending stamp law regulations will help solve the dispute between the ETA and natural gas companies on the collection of and payment for natural gas consumed by companies." The new decision obliges gas companies to notify all of the relevant tax offices and legal persons that use gas for industrial purposes of the amount consumed for the preceding month, as well as the amount tax owed.
