According to Total News, citing the public relations of Khorasan Razavi Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, Ahmad Zamaniyan, in the ninth meeting of the Committee on Transport, Transit and Border Affairs of Khorasan Razavi Chamber of Commerce, said, “unfortunately, in the current situation, tax is measured on performance and according to value added tax is also charged with it. Is the performance subject to value added tax? This issue should be investigated by inviting the relevant authorities and providing documents. More importantly, based on income, value added tax must be paid every season, which is very heavy and challenging for companies.
In another part of his speech, Zamaniyan mentioned the cost of public customs warehouses and stated, in the past, to determine the costs of public warehouses, meetings were held with the International Transport Association of the province every year in order to determine the costs of public warehouses in the Dogharun Customs in order to reach an agreement on the tariffs; Unfortunately, this does not happen now and the tariffs are determined without consulting the association and the private sector. The current costs of the warehouses are also criticized by Afghan and Iranian drivers.
The Chairman of the Transport, Transit and Border Affairs Commission of the Khorasan Razavi Chamber of Commerce stated, we held a meeting with the governor of Taibad about Dogharon and we expressed our complaints about some topics. For example, Dogharon Special Region announced in a circular that from April 24, Afghan drivers can receive cargo from any company they wish. We expressed our disagreement with the governor in this regard; Because we believe that this action is against the rules and regulations. This issue has created many challenges for transport companies; because disturbances will occur at the border following this issue, which makes monitoring difficult. We want to follow up on this issue from the manager of the Dogharon Special Region. Another issue is the tolls that the municipality collects from transit companies; This has increased the cost of transportation and caused the dissatisfaction of service recipients.
Seyed Mostafa Shamel, the tax advisor of Mashhad Chamber of Commerce, in response to the issue raised by the Head of the Transport, Transit and Border Affairs Commission of Khorasan Razavi Chamber of Commerce, said, based on Part 13, Clause B, Article 2 of the Value Added Tax Law, transportation services are included VAT is exempt. This law has been enforced in the country since 1400(2021); However, the Tax Affairs Organization and the technical office of this organization issued a circular in this regard, and as a result, many topics that we believe were exempt from added value excluded from the scope of exemption. Subsequently, the investigating units have also been obliged to implement the organization’s directives; Even if the circular is against the law and procedures of the country.
He added, If in the matter of transportation, performance tax, added value and diagnosis sheet have been wrongly issued to transit companies, the documents should be submitted to the Tax Commission of the Mashhad Chamber so that we can make the necessary demands from the General Directorate of Tax Affairs in this regard.
Shamel clarified, We believe that if the legislator only exempts freight from value added tax, he should have directly used the term transport fare instead of using the term transport service and consider it subject to value added tax. In this context, we made three suggestions; First, the Administrative Court of Justice should issue a request to revoke the letter of the Technical Office of the Tax Affairs Organization, and it is enough to prepare a bill in this regard. The second suggestion is that a correspondence should be made with the legal deputy of the governorate as an interpreter of the law in order to clarify this matter. The third suggestion is to conduct negotiations with the representatives of the Islamic Council in this regard, so that an inquiry can be obtained from the Islamic Council in this regard.
He stated that the tax, legal and judicial commissions of the Mashhad chamber should follow up on tax issues in the transit area, and added, we will reflect the expert discussions to the judicial commission in this regard. In addition, if we can demand from the General Administration of Tax Affairs to concentrate the processing of tax cases of transportation companies in one building and in a certain tax area, so that the issues can be investigated in a more specialized manner, the existing problems will be minimized.
Shamel reminded, the Chamber of Commerce has formed a special specialized tax working group with the Labor Department and it is necessary that the Association of International Transport Companies submit their files to us as examples so that we can review them before referring them to the Facilitation Headquarters and the Dialogue Council.