M.A.C.G convened a tax conference in Port Said jointly with ATIC, on the new tax regulations and what they require of companies working in the governorate. The room held the people the rules apply to — manufacturers, contractors, developers and the accountants who file for them — and the officials who administer them.
That combination is the point. Most of what a company learns about a new tax rule reaches it second hand, after the rule is in force and usually after a mistake has been made. A conference where the Authority and the Ministry take questions directly from the businesses affected shortens that gap to a morning.
Mohamed Metwaly, M.A.C.G's executive partner and a member of the Customs and Tax Committee of the Federation of Industries of Egypt, sat on the platform. The Committee is where industry puts its tax and customs problems to the Authority, so the questions raised in Port Said were already familiar ones.
Port Said is not an incidental venue. A great deal of Egypt's new industrial and logistics investment is going into the Suez Canal Economic Zone, much of it foreign-owned, and the companies behind it are meeting Egyptian tax procedure for the first time. M.A.C.G keeps an office in the city and is entered on the Register of Auditors at the Suez Canal Authority Economic Zone.
If a change in the rules affects something you are in the middle of, the fastest route is not to wait for the next conference.