SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the dead­line for the tax amnesty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Mukesh Ram­s­ingh said even though the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ex­tend­ed the dead­line from Sep­tem­ber 17th to Oc­to­ber 1st, 2021, it was still not enough time for busi­ness­es that were af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic to get the nec­es­sary pa­per­work in or­der.

“Be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and the short pe­ri­od of time for which they have been opened so far, they can­not seem to get all their tax pay­ments ready in such a short time,” Ram­s­ingh said.

With re­gard to the loom­ing prop­er­ty tax, Ram­s­ingh be­lieves gov­ern­ment should show some em­pa­thy.

“The peo­ple know they have to pay the tax­es.  We are just ask­ing for some time and mak­ing sure that the sys­tem is a sys­tem where the peo­ple can han­dle the pay­ments af­ford­ably at this time,” he stat­ed.

Ram­s­ingh said he hopes the up­com­ing bud­get would show some form of em­pa­thy and le­nien­cy to­wards the busi­ness sec­tor, which has been closed be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.