RATIN

Taxes imposed on farmers under review

Posted on May, 25, 2016 at 10:16 am


A TEAM of experts tasked with reviewing all taxes imposed on farmers is on final stages and will soon hand-over the report to relevant authorities for further steps, the House was informed yesterday.

Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mr Mwigulu Nchemba, told the National Assembly that suggestions to reduce or cancel such taxes will be incorporated in the Finance Bill that is due for tabling later next month.

“We are doing this to find out areas where farmers are being exploited. President John Magufuli had already pronounced that nuisance taxes imposed on small-holder farmers are things of the past,” he noted. The minister was responding to a supplementary question by Jasson Rweikiza (Bukoba Rural - CCM), who wanted to know when such taxes will be scrapped.

The Minister told the National Assembly here that the move is aimed at getting rid of all nuisance taxes as it was earlier pledged by President Magufuli as well as improving system of issuing agricultural inputs.

Earlier, the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mr William Ole Nasha, told the House that such taxes were holding farmers back and make their activity less paying. He said that all taxes which will be considered less important will be immediately scrapped.

He was also responding to Mr Rweikiza who had claimed that the government remained quiet on the taxes while it had already pledged to work on such unnecessary charges. He said that, for instance, coffee farmers were opting to sell their produce to neighbouring Uganda where they were fetching a lot of money unlike in Tanzania where farmers were compelled to pay 26 different types of taxes.

The deputy minister noted that the government was aware of the problems and that is why they had started working on such laws and see how they could be changed.

Source: Daily News