The Chamber of Travel and Tourism Companies and Agencies held a meeting with representatives of the Egyptian Tax Authority responsible for value-added tax and representatives of the Tour Guides Syndicate, to sign a joint cooperation protocol with them.
During the meeting, Hossam El-Shaer, chairman of the chamber, reviewed the national role of tourism companies and their full commitment to the laws of the state, stressing how keen the chamber and its companies are to support the state's public treasury and the country's national economy.
He added that the chamber supports the Tax Authority in its efforts to bring the informal economy into the formal one and to achieve the principle of full competition within the Egyptian market under the provisions of Law No. 67 of 2016 on Value-Added Tax, which made tour guiding services subject to the tax and requires the providers of this service to register with the authority.
The terms of the protocol concluded between the Chamber of Companies, the Tax Authority and the Tour Guides Syndicate include:
1- Forming a joint committee between the Tax Authority and the Chamber of Tourism Companies to discuss the problems hindering tourism companies in carrying out their work with the authority and to find appropriate solutions to them.
2- Affirming the role of the chamber and its companies in helping to collect the dues of the state and the public treasury from taxes, in particular value-added tax on tour guides.
3- Agreeing that tourism companies will remit the value-added tax due on the value of the tour guiding service, which the tour guide is charged with collecting from these companies and remitting to the authority.
4- Dealing only with tour guides who are licensed and registered with the Tax Authority (Value-Added Tax), after obtaining the guide's registration number and viewing the original registration certificate.
5- Tourism companies shall deduct the amount of tax due on the tour guiding service from each guide according to the agreed fee, and remit it to the authority by a payment order on their corporate number on behalf of the tour guide providing the service, accompanied by a monthly statement including the name of the tourism company, its registration number, the name of the tour guide, the guide's registration number, the value of the fees and service, and the amount of tax due that has been remitted to the authority.
El-Shaer pointed to the need to provide tourism companies with every means of achieving this goal by simplifying procedures for them, eliminating all obstacles and overcoming hurdles, in order to encourage them to strengthen bridges of trust between tourism companies and the Tax Authority.
