Teaching hospitals: Miftah urged to rectify ‘anomaly’ in finance bill

ISLAMABAD: Hospitals have approached Finance Minister Miftah Ismail to rectify a major ‘anomaly’ in the Finance Bill 2022 by restoring the sales tax exemption to the hospitals in its original form by including “teaching hospital” within the scope of the exemption.

According to a joint representation of the hospitals to the finance minister, hospitals are grateful for the restoration of the sales tax exemption, which was deleted vide the Finance (Supplementary) Act, 2022 dated January 15, 2022.

In this connection, hospitals would like to highlight that the sales tax exemption to hospitals, which has been proposed through the Finance Bill, 2022, is slightly different from the exemption, which was available during the last tenure of your government. In order to highlight the difference, we would like to reproduce below the exemption clause, which is proposed to be inserted in 6th Schedule vide the Finance Bill, 2022: Goods excluding electricity and natural gas supplied to hospitals run by the federal or provincial governments or charitable operating hospitals of 50 beds or more or the ‘teaching hospitals’ of statutory universities of 200 or more beds.

The hospitals understand the omission of the words ‘teaching hospital’ of statutory universities of two hundred or more beds, while restoring the exemption is an anomaly.

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The government may appreciate teaching hospital are the main pillar of generating future resource and generations of healthcare professionals to assure the country’s health and well-being for years to come. It also plays pivotal role in developing new and better ways to care for patients through outcomes-based research and the development of new technologies.

In view of the above, it is requested to kindly restore erstwhile exemption to the hospitals in its original form by including “Teaching Hospital” within the scope of exemption as available prior to Jan 15th 2022 and to also omit the words “excluding electricity and natural gas in order to restore the position as prevailed prior to July 2019, they added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022