Under the Unified Tax law, Ministry of Finance launched a huge national project for the automation and digitisation of tax collection procedures, Minister Mohamed Moeit announced on Monday. The project aims to simplify the filing of income, stamp, and value-added taxes, and introduces a new electronic billing and tax payment platform. The project comes in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Administrative Control Authority, IBM, e-finance, SAP, and Ernst and Young. Once implemented, the tax payment platform will provide tax IDs through which all companies can pay their taxes. The platform is also part of the larger E-Payments Law, which received preliminary approval from the parliament. According to Moeit, the project will raise the efficiency of Egypt's tax system and reduce tax avoidance, which would benefit the national economy, stimulate investment, combat tax evasion, and encourage the informal economy to join the formal one. This came during the minister's meeting with tax system leaders and representatives of the concerned authorities to discuss possible ways to modernise the tax system. Egypt's unified tax draft law has been set for discussion in the parliament. The new draft law aims to facilitate the procedures of tax collection. The electronic tax filing will be mandatory for legal persons and optional for ordinary people starting from January.
