Dear Honorable MPs, There seems to be a lot of ‘confusion’ and also a great deal of hesitation on the Civil Liability Bill currently in the National Assembly. Please don’t be confused or hesitant la. The Bill just affirms that Bhutanese lives and health are not cheap. Currently, when a …

One of the biggest changes in the Pay Structure Reform Bill 2022 passed by the National Assembly is that the MPs will be getting a 2,800 cc Duty Vehicle each, which will cost the exchequer around Nu 201 million (mn) to buy the vehicles tax free. The likely vehicle of …

A review by the Economic and Finance Committee (EFC) of the National Assembly has found that while mobile phones worth billions are being imported into Bhutan a large chunk of it is suspected to be deflected to India. The EFC Chairman MP Kinga Penjor who led the review or investigation …

Last week this paper reported that a notification from the Ministry of Finance saying taxes are to only be collected later at the border and point of sale retroactively only once the Tax Bill is passed, would lead to millions in loss of revenue since importers would know the taxes …

Vehicle Quota Removal One of the biggest changes in the Pay Restructure Reform Bill of Bhutan 2022 is the removal of the vehicle quota for civil servants and MPs. A government official said that vehicle quota was removed for two reasons. The first is that vehicle quotas do not fulfill …

In mid 2010 the first elected government announced that it would be coming up soon with taxes to prevent the consumption of unhealthy junk food. Even though it had 45 MPs in Parliament the government soon gave up the idea of a junk food tax due to media and public …

There has always been confusion in all the major pay revisions so far with complicated figures, percentages and allowances and so many civil servants and public servants are left scratching their heads until they get their pay slips and even then some don’t really know. This time around was no …

The Property Tax Bill of Bhutan 2022 with its 0.1% annual tax based on the value of the land and house will generate upwards of more than Nu 600 mn a year up from the current Nu 57 mn collected every year. Currently the Property Tax is collected by Thromdes …

The Finance Minister Namgay Tshering presented the Pay Structure Bill of Bhutan 2022 under which the Pay Structure shall comprise of fixed pay and variable pay. The Fixed pay shall comprise of Monthly Basic Pay (MBP) applied for the calculation of post service benefits and other computations currently pegged to the basic pay, and secondly the Non-Pensionable Monthly …

The tragic Takti Bus Accident that has led to the death of 6 monks of the Kanglung Shedra on 12 November could have been avoided if the 49-year-old bus driver had heeded the requests by the monks in the bus to slow down. Before Takti, the bus nearly had an …