Government to go broke in first-car tax refund
The Finance Ministry has no money to refund first-car buyers who have now occupied their vehicles for one year and are eligible for the tax refunds.
According to Daily News, the caretaker government has set aside 40 billion baht on its 2014 budget to refund excise tax to those car buyers under the government’s populist first-car buying scheme.
However the money set aside for refund is now insufficient to pay first car buyers who have occupied their cars for a full one year to be eligible for excise tax refund.
The Excise Department has filed information of eligible car buyers for the tax refund to the Comptroller General’s Department and so far 30.87 billion baht have been paid to car buyers.
It now has 9.21 billion baht left which is payable to car buyers in just 1-2 months, meaning that car buyers joining the scheme might not be able for payment this fiscal year but be delayed until the new allocation is set aside.
The local daily quoted a source as saying that payment of tax refund to car buyers is about 4-5 billion baht a month, while the remaining 9.2 billion baht will be paid up just in June.
Therefore, first car buyers will have to wait until the new allocation is to be set aside by the caretaker government which has to seek approval from the Election Commission because the payment committed to the next government.
The process for approval is time consuming and first car buyers are certain to get their tax refund late, the source said.
Latest figure released by the Comptroller General’s Department in March showed that a total of 901,731 first-car buyers who have occupied their vehicles for a full one year have received tax refund amounted to 63.35 billion baht.
A total of 1.25 million first-car buyers have entered the scheme with excise tax to be refunded amounted to 92.18 billion baht.
This month, the Comptroller General’s Department will transfer 4.08 billion baht to the bank accounts of a total of 53,700 eligible first-car buyers as tax refunds.