Government of Kazakhstan considers cancellation of purchase tax on foreign currency

/IRBIS, Nov.25, 99/ - Source from the Ministry of Finance informed journalists of REUTERS the government was considering a possibility of canceling one percent tax on foreign currency purchased by private persons beginning the new year. There is only a project of the resolution. The resolution itself has not been signed yet. The tax was imposed on September 18, 1999 as an additional source of income for the national budget of Kazakhstan. By some estimates, its levying had to raise about 3 bln tenge. However, Majit Esenbaev said at the press conference the revenues from this tax has not proved to be justified and amounted to less than 50% of planned amount. Therefore, the government excluded this collection from the budget-2000. Earlier, head of the National Bank Grigorii Marchenko said collections have been four times less than the government had planned. Volume of transactions declared by exchange booths sharply dropped. Part of the currency began to flow into the black market. "If we calculate the amount of income tax the banks did not pay, and subtract this amount from that our tax collection bodies collected, then we will get a very low number, and possible consequences of this are negative", said Marchenko at that time. By the data of information agency "EconoMix Data" (Almaty, Kazakhstan), employees of exchange booths say since the introduction of tax number of clients and dollar turnover of the booths declined catastrophically. "Even now, when the population should get active while exchange rate of the dollar decreases, it is not happening", informs the agency.