Kathmandu: Nepal Chamber of Commerce (NCC) last week announced a protest programme against the government decision to hike the ceiling of the value added tax. NCC’s warning comes a couple of days after the government increased VAT rate by 3.0 percentage points to 13 per cent through the Financial Ordinance to meet the resource gap of about 3.6 billion to foot rising security expenses and to give a 20 per cent raise to government employees.

In its first stage of protest, NCC representatives to the Revenue Advisory Committee will resign and its members will continue their business with 10 per cent VAT, it is said. NCC members have also decided not to get their import consignments released from the customs office. They will stop paying tax to the government and register the regular tax details at 10 per cent.