Important message to let the Senior Citizens
Last few days, I have had to spend more hours out of my home. You may be curious about what the reason is. Wait, I will explain it in short.
You all are aware that for the last two years, the central bank has deducted 5% of all deposits in the bank as withholding tax. This time the Malima government increased it up to 10%. They reduced the tax earned from employees; to fill that income, they increased the withholding tax by 10%.
Retired employees in the private sector like me have their main income as the interest rate they are gaining for their fixed deposits. Therefore, increasing this withholding tax badly affected us. Especially as interest rates also go down.
Anyway, the government has decided for those who have less than Rs. 150,000.00 in income per month to release them from this tax. For that, we have to go to the bank and get the withholding tax deduction report and fill out several forms submitted by the Inland Revenue Department. It was not an easy task because I had deposited my money in several banks. So, I had to go to all the banks and request it in writing.
We need to submit them quarterly. But some banks give them in a monthly report. Some banks give both fixed deposit and savings account rates together. So, we had to be more careful when filling out the forms.
Furthermore, we were only given one form by IRD, and we had to photocopy the required quantity.
First, we need to get a TIN number; for that, we have to fill out a separate form and hand it over with a copy of our identity card.
Last two days I had to waste my hours in banks and IRD; today again I went to IRD to hand it over. But as there were some mistakes I have to go there again. The space given in the form is not enough to write the account numbers; that is the reason for my mistake. Even though earlier it was said the closing date was March 31, today it was postponed to June 31st.
The government is repaying only from 1st April 2024 to 30th April 2025. However, the banks did not issue a report from January to April 2025, as that quarter is not finished yet. As the IRD postponed the closing date, I decided to submit them after doing my correction as well as getting reports for that quarter.
The government had repaid those amounts in 2022 and 2023 also, but at that time I didn't worry about that as it was only 5%. But this time it is 10%; so I decided to get back that money.
If your parents, relatives, or friends are relevant to this issue, please let them know about this because the closing date is postponed to June 30th.