The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has agreed to amend the draft law on new unified tax procedures amid concerns from taxpayers over harsh violation penalties, a government source told Enterprise. The MoF will likely remove several clauses, and replace them with a single stipulation that would make fines the default method of penalising non-compliant taxpayers. The stipulation would hand prison sentences of 2-5 years only in incidents of deliberate tax avoidance. The initial draft, which is up on the ministry’s website until Thursday to invite public discourse, had loosely phrased articles stipulating 3-5 years of prison time and fines of up to EGP50k. There were also other reservations from the community about the Tax Authority’s increased power to investigate tax filings, which some see as an infringement on company privacy.