The Excise Department today dismissed the new excise tax structure on whiskey, beer and wine now widely shared on the social media saying the actual collection won’t be as high as what it appeared on the tax structure.
Instead, the director-general of the department Somchai Poonsawat assured that the new excise tax structure would enable efficiency in tax collection, create fairness for business operators both in and outside the country.
He admitted that if the new excise tax law becomes effective 180 days after it is published in the Royal Gazette, the department will get higher tax.
But at the same time, the department will adjust tax rates so as to not put higher burden on business operators passing the burden to consumers.
He said the calculation for the new tax structure was based on tax collection from maximum rates while in actual practise, the collected rates wouldn’t be as high as appeared in the new tax structure.
He said he couldn’t say how much the exact rates would be as this would be fixed again but assured that the new rates wouldn’t be higher than the existing rates.
He said the Excise Department will adhere to the government’s policy that advised that the new tax structure must not affect the burden of business operators and consumers.
He said the new excise tax is a merger of seven excise tax laws into one and it changes the tax collection from ex factory price to retail price without VAT which will be fairer to tax payers.
He also said business operators would be given a six month reprieve to adjust tax rates of their products lower because the revision of the excise tax laws would result in higher tax bases, and therefore they have to lower tax rates that will not affect consumers.
