Ok.. lets get back to this particular topic.. the issue and its practicality!!
Lets looks at the items that has been taxed!
View attachment 7127
I've seen most of the people in this thread saying that how hard they earn money and stuff like that.. which is true!! Agreed!!
But lets break this down a bit more!!
According to the
Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment statistics
As you can see
here
by 2006 there were 203841 people working abroad.. and lets take a look at those items again.. how many of us can actually afford those items? I mean.. these are sort of luxury items for an average Sri Lankan still...
According to the Bureau of Foreign Employment all foreign workers are categorized into 6 areas
1. Professional
2. Middle Level
3. Clerical and Related
4. Skilled
5. Unskilled
6. Housemaid
Ok.. lets say for the sake of argument that people can afford these items.. looking at that category I would say these can afford by Professional or Middle level jobs.. I dont see a possibility of buying these items by people any lower in the order than that... (maybe very rarely)
So lets add up according to the sources (2006)
Professional + Middle Level = 1619+6655 = 8284 which is only about 4% of the total amount of Sri Lankans working abroad can afford these!!! So the rest of 96% are not effected!!
Lets further break it down to Middle East countries since lot of people talked about middle east countries as well..
UAE + Kuwait + Saudi + Qatar + Lebanon = 6307 (Professional + Middle Level)
The percentage that probably can afford these items would be 3.7% ~
So give it another thought.. maybe its not as bad as it may seem as some people want to make a big drama out of it!!
