May 8 (TheLedger) - Tax debate in Sri Lanka has spent the last three years frozen between two arguments that aren't really in conversation with each other.
The pre-2022 status quo — a personal income tax-free threshold above the median wage, generous corporate exemptions, no VAT on a long list of services — produced a revenue base too thin to fund a modern state. The current regime corrected the headline numbers but did so on the backs of a narrow PAYE base and broad-based VAT, both of which fall hardest on the salaried middle and the urban poor.