Justify the imposition of shortfall tax on companies

      

Justify the imposition of shortfall tax on companies

  

Answers


Wilfred
- One of the sources of revenue to a government is the withholding tax charged on dividends.
- When companies and other entities distribute dividends, the government directly earns the tax revenue thereon. When no dividends are distributed, or some part of the profits is retained, the government loses out on tax revenue.
- Given that companies have a choice of distributing dividends or not there is a possibility that the government may miss its revenue targets where no or minimal dividends are distributed.
- In order to avoid the above scenario, the government has come up with regulations that companies must distribute at least a certain fraction of their profit as dividend.
- Where a company does not distribute a minimum of the stated fraction as dividend then it is liable for shortfall tax to compensate the government for lost tax on dividend.
Wilfykil answered the question on February 25, 2019 at 12:03


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