The Centre for Social Concern (CfSC) has said it has not given up on lobbying government to consider its plea to have the tax-free income tax band in the 2018\/19 national budget raised to K50,000.<\/p>\n
CfSC Executive Director, Father Jos Kuppens, said the centre, together with several other civil society organisations (CSOs), feel the proposed K35,000 tax-free band is \u201ctoo insignificant\u201d to cushion low-income earners from hardships resulting from the rising cost of living.<\/p>\n
Kuppens made the remarks during a public debate his organisation conducted in Lilongwe on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
He said low-income earners are already weighed down by other forms of taxes when they are purchasing basic needs and\/or paying for social services.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, we preferred K80,000 tax-free band but because of the already given objections by government, we agreed that it should be K50,000. That\u2019s why we are not happy with the K35, 000 tax-free band because people are already paying many other taxes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kuppens said the centre will, therefore, conduct a number of debates to solicit views from the public on how the CSOs can re-engage the government and Members of Parliament (MPs) as debate on the national budget starts in earnest in a few days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that, when budget discussions start, people are reminded of the cost of living,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before Minister of Finance, Goodall Gondwe, presented the 2018\/19 National Budget in the National Assembly last Friday, the Malawi Congress of Trade Unions and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Malawi pleaded with the government to raise the tax-free bracket to a reasonable amount.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Centre for Social Concern (CfSC) has said it has not given up on lobbying government to consider its plea to have the tax-free income tax band in the 2018\/19 national budget raised to K50,000. CfSC Executive Director, Father Jos Kuppens, said the centre, together with several other civil society organisations (CSOs), feel the proposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65604,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65601\/revisions\/65604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}