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Tribune News Network
Doha
The corporate sector in Qatar needs national law on value added tax (VAT) at least eight months prior to its expected implementation in January 2018 to get prepared for the new tax, a senior official of KPMG Qatar has said.
"If Qatar plans to implement VAT starting from January 2018, the corporate sector needs national law to regulate the new tax well in advance," KPMG Qatar Partner and Head of Tax and Corporate Services Craig Richardson said.
Since VAT is a new concept to the country, Richardson said, businesses and tax authorities in Qatar will have to recruit and train sufficient staff before its implementation.
"In addition, governance frameworks may also need to be reviewed and updated to incorporate policies, processes and controls that comply with VAT legislation," he added.
Richardson said that the current lack of certainty pertaining to the ratification and release of the GCC VAT Framework Agreement, as well as the lack of domestic legislation puts the implementation of VAT at a risk of delay against the original intended date of January 2018.
A number of challenges are before the GCC countries to meet the deadline for introducing VAT, he said adding that once the agreement was ratified, each country could issue its' own domestic legislation to implement VAT, including Qatar.
However, he said, the current absence of VAT legislation gives the corporate sector less time to prepare. Member states cannot finalise their national VAT laws until they finalise and adopt the GCC VAT Framework Agreement, he said.
Although VAT will impact all businesses in Qatar, either directly or indirectly, it will have a neutral impact if managed effectively.
Richardson said,"The first step businesses must make is to plan and analyse their products and services for the impact of VAT. If businesses are to maintain profitability, they must invest in understanding the impact of VAT on their business from an operational point of view."
Before implementation, he said, businesses could build and test systems and processes to help them comply with legislation and embed these within existing processes.
Explaining the impact of VAT on the government sector, Richardson said,"Government sector needs to prepare as VAT requires monthly or quarterly filing of returns and payments of taxes."
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02/02/2017
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