The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s Central Revenue Agency (CRA) will be operational “well before the end of 2015”, a senior official telling Tribune Business yesterday that it will be based on Carmichael Road.

John Rolle, the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary, said all agencies set to be merged into the CRA - the newly-created Value-Added Tax (VAT) Department, Business Licence and real property tax units - will be operating from the same location by the fiscal year-end of June 30, 2015.

Mr Rolle said the CRA, which aims to centralise the Government’s core revenue collection activities under one roof, will be based in the same plaza that contains Scotiabank (Bahamas) Carmichael branch.

“We know that before the end of this fiscal year, they will all be operating in the same facility and, in many cases, operating seamlessly,” Mr Rolle said of the three revenue agencies, adding that full CRA integration would conclude “well before the end of 2015”.

The Government believes that integrating key revenue streams via the CRA will lead to better efficiency and enforcement in its tax administration, driving greater compliance by being able to cross-check whether companies are fully compliant with their obligations - and tie licence renewals to being current.

Such a strategy has not been opposed by the private sector, with Gowon Bowe, the Coalition for Responsible Taxation’s chairman, earlier this year urging the Government not to lose sight of the CRA objective.

Mr Rolle yesterday suggested the CRA’s creation would not necessarily lead to increased costs for the Government, as it would “prevent some duplication” on enforcement and back office support.

He added that the CRA would be able to “accomplish multiple things from the same service-centric platform”, and provide stronger support for “some of the existing revenue lines”.

Mr Rolle, meanwhile, tacitly conceded that the Government may not hit its November 30 target for getting all 4,000-4,500 mandatory VAT payers registered.

The Government yesterday said its VAT Department’s office at the Gladstone Road Freight Terminal would be open between 9am-6pm on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, in a bid to cope with the long-expected last-minute rush.

“We’re seeing higher volumes and a strong pick-up this week,” Mr Rolle said of the registration process. “We’re feeling better this week than in the previous week.

“We more or less recognised, from the trends we saw at the beginning, that we were likely to see this back up at the end.”

Mr Rolle confirmed that more resources had been devoted to deal with the “queue” of VAT registration applications, but demurred when asked if all mandatory payers would be on the register by end-Sunday.

“That would be the ideal,” he said, adding that “we expect” some registration completions might drag beyond November 30.

“We expect that we’ll have some persons trying to decide whether they can conceal the size of their operations or not,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business. “Some may decide beyond November 30 to go in and register.

“It’s hard to judge what sort of calculation is going on in the minds of some of these businesses.

“The important thing to understand is for very large businesses, their identity is known. We’ll pretty much know if those applications have been submitted, and who to monitor from November 30.”

Emphasising that November 30 was “a statutory deadline” for businesses with an annual turnover exceeding $100,000 to register, Mr Rolle said companies wishing to do so on a voluntary basis could do so at any time between now and January 1.

The Financial Secretary also emphasised that the dialogue between the Government and private sector would not cease upon VAT’s implementation, as “new issues will arise during the go live period”.

Suggesting that compromise should be the order of the day, Mr Rolle added: “Some of the policy positions taken are not always ideal, both from a business standpoint and from even the tax administration side.

“In going forward, we try and focus not so much on whether there is complete satisfaction with certain policies that the Government has been after - there may be less than happy sentiments about certain positions - but there is a balance struck on all sides.”