-- MOF Minister --ltc

Minister of Finance Dr Youssef Boutros Ghali affirmed that the establishment of the LTC is an important achievement on the way of developing thought and administration of taxes in Egypt. Opening the LTC is not just an opening of a building but is rather approaching a new tax thought moving from a collection policy of tax administration to a development thought in which tax is one of the foundations of investment development in Egypt.

The objective of the establishment of the LTC is to eliminate any administrative obstacles before large taxpayers to pay their taxes, thus achieving two objectives , on the one hand this guarantees developed tax treatment for the different business sectors which leads to improving investment environment in Egypt and providing easy tax treatment in accordance with the easy procedures which play a key role in this regard, on the other hand guaranteeing the collection of the biggest amount of targeted revenues of income and sales taxes in the budget without delay or procedural problems.

LTC comprises 2000 large taxpayers from about 6 millions taxpayers, small, medium, and large. Those two thousands have been chosen in accordance with objective and scientific criteria. The target is, through 2000 taxpayers, to collect about 41 billion EG pounds from the total target of income and sales taxes in the budget for the current fiscal year 2005/2006 which is 65 billion EG pounds.

The establishment of the LTC is a basic step to develop tax administration in Egypt and raise the performance efficiency of tax work to reach the world-class levels.

Also it is a step to contribute in improving the investment environment in Egypt and stimulate flows of funds for establishing investment projects in Egypt in the next phase. This experience is not new and a lot of advanced countries and also some Arab countries , Jordan and Lebanon have started to develop their tax systems through establishing such centers. The establishment of the LTC is considered the first step in merging the income tax with sales tax in one tax entity dealing with it will be through one data base, one file, and one audit visit, which virtually leads to reducing the administrative and financial burden borne by both the tax machinery and the taxpayer as well through auditing, assessing, and paying the tax. Furthermore, reviewing the files and returns to reach the final tax due. The LTC will provide its taxpayers with a lot of advantages the top of which is to be treated through computerized procedures and adopting trust principle of what is provided by the taxpayer in terms of returns and data about their income, in addition to applying the selective audit method on taxpayers files and reviewing this method in accordance with smooth procedures, not those complicated ones faced by taxpayers in Egypt and investors abroad.

There are big chances for the success of the LTC with its modern procedures and systems in tax administration with large taxpayers especially they are big firms keeping good books and records and comply with tax, furthermore they have the technical and administrative potentialities of tax treatment through computerized procedures for filing their returns or computing, auditing, and paying their tax due.

LTC is considered a step in the program of tax system development in Egypt. This step is not the last one but it will be followed by other steps in the different tax locations on the national level. These tax locations will witness big development in the next phase not only in terms of buildings or equipment but in raising the efficiency of human resources as well and this will be through developed training programs to cope with the next phase and its challenges.