The ABC understands that while the measure will start on July 1, the tax break will come in the form of a bigger end-of-year tax rebate. The tax relief will be delivered by an increase to the Low Income Tax Offset (LITO) which doesn’t show up in weekly or fortnightly pay packets. At the moment, the LITO is worth $445 a year for people earning below $37,000 annually. It gradually reduces and cuts out completely when people earn $66,667 a year. Treasurer Scott Morrison is expected to announce the value of the offset will more than double to $1,000. It will be extended to people on incomes of about $90,000 a year, the ABC understands, and would still be phased out so that the more a person earns, the lower the rebate they would receive. That would mean an extra $10.50 a week for those who receive the maximum benefit. Giving a tax cut in this way is cheaper for the Government because it is targeted at low to middle-income earners and would not flow through to people on higher incomes. It is tipped to cost the Government about $4 billion to $5 billion a year.

Sri Lanka : Therefore, the Prime Minister said that he has advised to inquire into this and take the financial institution under the Finance Ministry.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced this addressing the United National Party (UNP) May Day rally held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium on Sunday.

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Speaking further the Prime Minister said the UNP was able to take control of the Samurdhi Ministry which was assigned to the UNP following the recent cabinet reshuffle and has to take steps to correct the mismanagement. If necessary a new mechanism can be formulated to administer the mechanism.

The Prime Minister further said that he received the statistics of the Samurdhi Ministry operations yesterday and Rs. 25 billion has been allocated for the Ministry for 12 months of this year. However, the Ministry has already spent Rs. 13 billion in the first three months of the year.

“Accordingly, 53% of the total money has been spent in three months. It should only spend 25% for three months. So what happened to the money?” he asked.

The Premier pointed out that the Samurdhi Bank is an institution that was not monitored by any institution while other state financial instruments such as Employees Provident Fund, Public Employees Trust Fund are managed under the Finance Ministry. However, there is no regulation to oversee the Samurdhi Bank.

“Therefore, I inquired about this and advised to take it under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance,” he said.

He said all others banks in the country are controlled by the Central Bank, and it is a big problem that only Samurdhi Bank is not under the control of the Central Bank.