In a meeting held in the department of customs and revenues of the Ministry of Finance today, the media tax rebates and other financial problems of media were assessed.
Approximately two months ago, the representatives of media presented these issues to President Ghani and he instructed Ministry of Finance to create a committee consisting the representatives of Ministries of Information and Culture, Economics, Communications and IT, Department of Breshna, and the representatives of the Federation of Journalists and Media of Afghanistan in order to address these problems.
The first session of the committee was held on this Sunday under the chairmanship of the deputy minister for customs and revenues of the Ministry of Finance, in order to discuss on the existing issues; including tax rebates and penalties, power consumption costs, the price of media power consumption, Frequency and license fees for TV and radio stations, and the overlapping contradiction of laws whether to tax or tax exemption of print media.
In this meeting, it was also decided that a technical team shall investigate all these issues and present a report to the coming session of the committee.
In the meeting of technical team which was held today, it was decided that the related government agencies should come up with a complete list of all tax rebates and penalties, power consumption costs, and frequency and license fees in order to be discussed in the next session.
The officials from Ministry of Finance present at the meeting asserted that they need to consult with their superiors on the legal issue of whether or not to tax the print media, and they will state their opinion in the coming meeting.
In this meeting the tax problems of those media and publishing agencies which have long ceased to function but they are still included in tax lists of the Ministry of Finance were also debated and the ministries of Economics and Information and Culture were asked to prepare and submit a complete list of such media and publishing agencies within a week and present it in the coming meeting of the technical team.
