News
Mansion tax to be revised; requires fine-tuning
View(s):The Government’s mini budget proposal to impose a ‘mansion tax’ of one million rupees on houses that are worth more than Rs. 100 million or having 5,000 square feet will be revised, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said yesterday. “There is considerable confusion over this levy. People have asked me what happens to large ancestral homes that have been coming down from family to family for generations,” he told the Sunday Times.
Mr. Karunanayake said that the idea behind the levy was to “rope in tax defaulters who were building palatial houses” with the money they earned. The Ministry would increase the floor area of houses and place a construction date from which the levy would be applicable. The Finance Minister explained that formulation of his budget speech and the translation into Sinhala had gone on till early morning on Thursday. Hence, he said, there were areas that “required fine tuning.”
The Ministry of Finance is also examining the colossal sums spent by the previous UPFA Government on tamashas. He said that in one instance, Rs. 846 million had been spent on efforts to secure Hambantota as the venue for the Commonwealth Games. This exercise was spearheaded by the Central Bank’s former governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal, and the UPFA’s Hambantota District Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa. A chartered SriLankan Airlines aircraft ferried a big delegation to the Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis to lobby the governing body that was to make the decision. The Games, however, went to Gold Coast City in Quensland, Australia.
Mr. Karunanayake said he hoped to make a statement in Parliament soon on how public funds had been squandered. “We don’t want to fight corruption. We want to eliminate it,” he vowed.