Most Egyptian actors and belly dancers have made it a point to pay all their income taxes before getting involved with government officials and possibly facing prosecution. In the recent months, news of actors, singers, and dancers escaping from paying due taxes has spread all over the newspapers. The most recent news was that the Egyptian actress Nelly had attempted to escape paying her income tax, which amounted to one million Egyptian pounds.
Nelly told the UAE based daily, Al Bayan, that there has been a mix-up of names and that she had paid all her taxes in full. She added that she wasn’t the one intended, and upon reading the news she sent a legal consultant to the tax auditors to clear her name and prove that she had had paid in full all taxes owed to the government. The woman who was wanted was actually a Russian belly dancer also named Nelly who fled the country before paying her due taxes. She added that she makes it a point to always remove the sum of taxes from any wages before taking her share to make sure she does not face any problems with the law.
On a similar note, Nelly’s mix-up made a number of artists rush to pay their taxes before facing any possible prosecutions, especially the Egyptian belly dancer Fifi Abdo who owed over half a million Egyptian pounds in taxes. Fifi had refused to submit false information to tax auditors as she was advised by many to do so and insisted saying that she has no desire to cheat the government and felt it her duty as an Egyptian citizen to pay her taxes in full.
A number of actors like Nour El Sherif, Lucy, Yusra and many others rushed to tax auditors to pay their income taxes for the year 2002 wanting to avoid getting into any troubles with the government.
In December, The Egyptian General Administration of Tax Evasion and Taxation Authority seized a number of Egyptian singer Hakim’s personal possessions, including his cars, for not paying overdue taxes on his singing activities that have accumulated to 3 million Egyptian pounds since 1990. Investigating tax officials have discovered that the singer has not paid any income tax from concerts, new albums, and advertising which reached over 30 million Egyptian pounds.
It is worthy to highlight that this is not the first case of its kind related to Egyptian artist tax evasion and that most of such cases are usually resolved by a reconciliation between the tax office and the artists and the payment of the overdue taxes. –Albawaba.com
