Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, has an­nounced the ex­ten­sion of the tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance amnesty to Au­gust 2, 2025. The ini­tia­tive, orig­i­nal­ly in­tro­duced un­der the Fi­nance Act, 2024 and ef­fec­tive from Oc­to­ber 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2024, is in­tend­ed to pro­vide re­lief on penal­ties and in­ter­est for a wide range of tax­es and na­tion­al in­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions. Le­gal No­tices Nos. 211 through 215 of 2025 for­mal­ize the ex­ten­sion.

The tax amnesty ap­plies to penal­ties and in­ter­est ac­crued up to the in­come year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2023, and in­cludes nu­mer­ous tax cat­e­gories such as:

In­di­vid­ual In­come Tax

Cor­po­ra­tion Tax

Val­ue Added Tax (VAT)

Pe­tro­le­um Prof­its Tax (PPT)

Sup­ple­men­tal Pe­tro­le­um Tax (SPT)

Un­em­ploy­ment Levy

Pay-as-You-Earn (PAYE)

With­hold­ing Tax

Ho­tel Ac­com­mo­da­tion Tax

In­sur­ance Pre­mi­um Tax

Health Sur­charge

Stamp Du­ty

Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax

Club Gam­ing Tax

Tax on Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices

Busi­ness Levy

Green Fund Levy

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Amnesty, mean­while, cov­ers all in­ter­est and penal­ties on con­tri­bu­tions out­stand­ing pri­or to Oc­to­ber 1, 2024. It is ap­plic­a­ble on­ly to em­ploy­ers reg­is­tered with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board be­fore that date.

How­ev­er, the ex­ten­sion has not been with­out crit­i­cism from some on so­cial me­dia. In a me­dia re­lease dat­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, Min­is­ter Tan­coo, then in op­po­si­tion, crit­i­cized the pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, as­sert­ing that such ex­ten­sions “un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the tax­a­tion sys­tem” by fa­cil­i­tat­ing tax evaders and set­ting a “wrong prece­dent.” He de­scribed the mea­sure as an “open in­sult to civic mind­ed per­sons and busi­ness­es who have dili­gent­ly abid­ed by the law,” and ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s will­ing­ness to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against de­fault­ers.

Min­is­ter Tan­coo had fur­ther chal­lenged the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to dis­close how much tax rev­enue re­mains un­col­lect­ed and to pro­vide trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing delin­quent busi­ness­es ben­e­fit­ing from the amnesty.

The Min­istry now re­minds tax­pay­ers and em­ploy­ers that if out­stand­ing amounts are not paid dur­ing the amnesty pe­ri­od, all waived penal­ties and in­ter­est will be re­in­stat­ed and be­come ful­ly payable as though the amnesty had nev­er been grant­ed.