Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-03-21

Drafting of Voluntary Disclosure Bill

- The main objective of the Voluntary Disclosure Act is to permit the people liable to pay income tax, to regularize past non-compliance in respect of the payment of income tax on the income derived within Sri Lanka and to encourage them to start paying income tax as required by the Inland Revenue Act. By doing so, many countries offer similar Voluntary Disclosure programmes and have been successful in increasing their tax revenue. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Ranil Wickramasinghe, the Prime Minister to instruct the Legal Draftsman to draft the Voluntary Disclosure Bill based on the concept paper, was approved by the Cabinet.