Indirect taxes play a growing role for most firms as regulations around VAT, customs systems, and international trade increase.
Poor indirect tax management can strictly affect cash flow, allow the over or underpayment of tax and attract penalties for non-compliance.
Our Indirect tax team is ready to help review your company's current indirect tax position and provide relevant advice, planning and impact analysis on a range of indirect taxes and help companies with their economic activity.
Our Indirect tax services include:
Value Added Tax (“VAT”)
The GCC states agreed to a broad framework for the introduction of VAT in early 2017. The framework agreement sets out the underlying principles of VAT laws for the six GCC countries, although there are areas where member states will have some flexibility. It is expected that Qatar will announce VAT in the next few months.
While VAT is not intended to be a tax on business, collecting the tax and remitting it to the government will have significant compliance costs. There could also be cash flow implications. Supply chains need to be reviewed to understand the impact of VAT. VAT costs and accounting obligations will need to be identified so they can be addressed. There are also implications for IT systems. Adapting to VAT will mean updating or upgrading ERP and IT systems and interfaces to correctly capture input and output VAT. Governance frameworks will also need to be reviewed and updated to ensure policies, processes and controls comply and continue to comply with VAT legislation.
Trade and Customs (T&C)
We are proud to inform that KPMG is global indirect tax leader with multidimensional service lines. This said, our T&C team located in Doha will be glad to share with you their inputs based on their broad experience together with sharing opinions gained during the ideas exchanged with other members of the KPMG Indirect Tax Network. Furthermore, our team is continuously in touch with local customs authorities for the purposes of identification and resolution of future practical disputes that may arise risks for our clients.
Excise Tax
Effective from 1 January 2019, Qatar intoduced excise tax on harmful products in line with the GCC Unified Excise Tax Treaty. Businesses engaging in importing, manufacturing and storing excise goods such as tobacco and its products, carbonated drinks, energy drinks and special purpose goods (consumed under specific conditions and authorisations) are affected by the introduction of excise tax.
