Business individuals should complete renewing licenses by the end of this month. But besides prior public announcements and notifications, many failed to carry out renewal works at the earliest.
Many business license holders were seen today at the trade office in Thimphu since today is the last working day for this month. An official from the trade office said the office has notified about license renewal works to begin from April as soon after filing Personal Income Tax. The official added, people should start renewing incenses as soon after notification.
The office introduced a token system two weeks ago to control the crowd. The trade official said,
“They don’t have to wait in queue for a long time because we have a limited number of license that our staff can renew in a day. Each token we issue, some of them carry more than five licenses also. So, that is a minimum of five licenses multiplied by seventy tokens come around 250 to 300 licenses to be renewed and so beyond that, we cannot renew in a day.”
Those individuals who have tokens in July have to bear a penalty of ngultrum twenty per license per day. Some business license holders say they should not be charged penalty since they turned up for renewal works before the due date.
“They have sent us SMS saying that the last renewal date is on the 30th of June. But today when I reached here, they told me there is no token for today and issued me a token for date 9. As informed, I reached before the due date but I don’t know why they are going to charge us a penalty,” said Dorji Gyeltshen from Paro.
“I got a token for 9th July. Firstly we should know they have human resource shortage, only a few of them are working. I think there is some problem with the agency,” added Pema Loday from Thimphu.
An individual who did not want to reveal his identity said, the office should change the system of renewing license. He said the present system makes them pay penalty even when the fault is with the government.
However, sooner or later license holders have to bear the penalty if they missed the deadline.
