KABUL: Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI), said that government has recently decided to raise tax on imported boxes in hope to urge domestic industry and 25 percent custom duty jumps on transported imported boxes.
The reason all goods imported in boxes have seen tax rates jump is said to be simply that there is no existing law separating duties applied to boxes alone, versus boxes containing goods. Reportedly this has led to cases in which traders are forced to pay more for their boxes than the actual goods they are transporting.
ACCI officials have been the most outspoken critics of the new policy, arguing that there is nowhere in the world that traders are forced to pay taxes on the boxes in which they transport their goods.
“Since the very beginning, we were against this idea of the government charging for boxes that contain goods with a 25 percent tax,” ACCI Chairman Atiqullah Nasrat, said. “Boxes are not separately taxed from goods anywhere else in the world, they are included in the same taxes that are paid for goods.”
Meanwhile, however, officials at the Customs Directorate have acknowledged the issue and maintained that the tax on boxes containing goods has been lowered over the past 10 days to just 10 percent. “At the moment, the customs tax on boxes of goods is 10 percent and this was applied in customs 10 days ago,” said Muhammad Masood Yassin, the Tariffs Director at the Directorate of Customs. “That is how much tax is collected from boxes.”
Economic analysts have said the box tax controversy comes as just another example of how Afghanistan’s customs system is dysfunctional and in need of reform. They say the discrepancies in the system frustrate international businessmen and prevent them from investing in Afghanistan.
