The main changes introduced by the Finance Act for 2015, provided for by Act No. 59/2014 of 26 December 2014, mainly concern:
Measures to improve the competitiveness of financing, investment and employment
- Aligning the withholding tax with the annual tax
- Measures to support fully exporting companies
- Easing the recovery of the tax credit
- Clarifying the method for calculating the depreciation of mobile-telephony stations
Measures to continue tax reforms, broaden the tax base and improve its collection
- Widening the scope of corporate tax to associations that do not operate in accordance with the regulations in force
- Widening the final withholding tax payable by permanent establishments
- Continuing the collection of the exceptional contribution from persons not covered by the 2014 supplementary Finance Act
- Improving the conditions for benefiting from the advance on the vocational-training tax
- Improving the means of collecting registration duties due on public contracts
- Adapting the tax regime of resellers in the telecommunications field to its specific features
- Improving tax collection through withholding at source
- Clarifying the procedures for assessing administrative penalties and their limitation periods
Measures to support taxpayers’ guarantees and transparency rules
- Confirming taxpayers’ rights during automatic-assessment operations and the discussion of their results
- Clarifying the procedures for assessing administrative penalties, their limitation and its interruption
- Reducing the scope of application of criminal penalties
- Option to pay the travel tax per calendar year
Social measures
- Exempting individuals earning agricultural or fishing income under Article 23 of the IRPP and IS code from the 1.5% withholding tax
- Reducing the VAT rate from 18% to 12% on low-voltage electricity for domestic use and on low- and medium-voltage electricity used to operate agricultural-irrigation water-pumping equipment, as well as petroleum products
- Exempting smoking-cessation aid products from customs and consumption duties and subjecting them to VAT at 12%
- Exempting loan contracts granted by the BTS from registration duties
Miscellaneous provisions
- Reducing the age of vehicles benefiting from tax advantages for Tunisians living abroad when carrying out or taking part in a project, from 7 to 5 years
- Creation of a fund for restructuring and modernising the banking sector
- Aligning the provisions of tax rights and procedures with administrative-penalty procedures by subjecting them to the litigation procedures followed for automatic tax assessment
- Levying a 1% duty for the State treasury on any cash payment to public accountants exceeding 10,000 dinars
- Updating the stamp duty on foreign-currency export declarations to TND 10 instead of TND 3
- Mandatory publication of information by customs
