​HE Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Al Qassim Region Ziad A. Al-Mushayqih received HE Director General of the General Authority of Zakat and Tax (GAZT) Ibrahim M. Al Mufleh and the delegation accompanying him at Al Qassim Region. At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Al Mushayqih thanked Mr. Al Mufleh and the accompanying delegation for responding to the invitation indicating the significant role of GAZT in serving businesses and the advanced services it provides for this sector. Then, Mr. Al Mufleh took the podium to thank Al Qassim Chamber of Commerce and Industry for hosting the meeting and explaining the Authority’s role in collecting Zakat from KSA nationals and GCC citizens who are doing business in the Kingdom. He also underlined GAZT role in collecting taxes from oil and gas companies, implementing the bilateral and multilateral taxation conventions and raising awareness of Zakat and tax collection rules among the taxpayers. This, he said, would enhance their voluntary compliance with the rules and thus ensure that they would respond to GAZT and finish their procedures right away. Since its inception, GAZT has sought to develop and update its collection systems, streamline the process, improve employees’ abilities to use the modern technology to accelerate and facilitate taxpayer service, he said. It set expansion plans to open new branches across KSA which sees a steady economic growth, he said indicating that GAZT had only 10 branches until recently. Then, it added more 6 branches across KSA and 4 female departments to make things easier for taxpayers and help them pay their Zakat. This also increased the revenues of Zakat and taxes by improving the collection efficiency. The developmental efforts enhanced performance in all areas and updated the systems to live up to the developments in different sectors and organs of the e-Government, GAZT Director General said. According to him, the Zakat revenues collected by the authority are deposited in a special account with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to be spent on social security provided by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Zakat revenues cover the largest portion of the pensions paid by the Social Security while tax revenues are deposited in public revenue account with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to be spent along with other revenues on several services offered by the KSA government to the citizens and residents.               

After Mr. Al Mufleh's speech, questions were received from the businessmen in contracting sector and were all answered. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Al-Mushayqih thanked Mr. Ibrahim Al Mufleh and his accompanying delegation and presented shields to them, standing with them for a photo op. The delegation included Mr. Saad bin Abdulaziz Al Saidan, Deputy Director General for Executive Affairs, Mr. Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al Hassan, General Manager of Auditing Department, Mr. Abdulaziz bin Saleh Al Turki, Director of GAZT branch at Al Qassim, and Mr. Abdulrahman bin Nasser Al Asmari, Director's Office Manager.