No good news for corporate income taxpayers

The government has proposed to keep the income tax rate for company taxpayers unchanged for the 2017-18 fiscal year. In his budget speech on Thursday, Finance Minister AMA Muhith claimed that the country's corporate tax rate is low in various sub-regional and regional comparisons. “As we are not increasing tax rate in any other areas, for the interest of stability in revenue collection, I propose to keep the rates unchanged for the next year,” said the veteran minister. Currently, publicly traded companies pay 25% tax while it is 35% for non-publicly traded companies. The rate is 40% for publicly traded banks, insurance and financial institutions (other than merchant banks). Newly established companies approved by the government in 2013 also pay the same rates. On the other hand, non-publicly traded bank, insurance and financial institutions pay 42.5% tax, while it is 37.5% for merchant banks. For publicly traded mobile companies, the tax rate is 40% while it is 45% for non-publicly traded mobile network operators. There is also a uniform duty of 45% on both publicly traded and non-publicly traded cigarette manufacturers and a 20% tax on dividend income of companies.