The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune BusinessReporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s Central Revenue Agency (CRA) could be created by mid-2015, a senior Ministry of Finance official said yesterday, adding that it would “certainly” come into being before next year ended.

John Rolle, the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary, said the process to unification of the Government’s Value-Added Tax (VAT) Department, real property tax and Business License units was “well underway”.

Mr Rolle told Tribune Business: “There is no pause to that process. The Agency will comprise of VAT, Business License and property tax.

“In terms of a unified department, I would say that would be reached by mid-2015, and certainly before the end of the year. What we would be doing is bringing together the operations that exist now for Business Licensing and property tax with the VAT operations.”

He added: “With the Business License there is a complete upgrade to the process happening, as well as the computer systems. That reform needs to take its course without distractions.

“More people are aware of changes with regards to real property tax. There is a complete review of the legislation going on as well as a complete revamp of the IT system and the management of the process.

“All of those reforms are happening parallel to VAT. By the time we get to the Central Revenue Agency as a legal entity, all of the integration would have been well pronounced and virtually completed.”

Speaking on the VAT registration process, Mr Rolle said the Ministry of Finance was moving to initiate “one-on-one” interactions with the larger businesses to get them into the system.

“We are also starting to collect the information of the Government agencies and entities, and having them properly enrolled,” he added.

Mr Rolle said a self-service registration process for other businesses should start next month. “For other businesses we will be putting out the VAT registration form, the paper version,” he said.

“We are not asking them to return them to us at the moment, but to use it to collect all of the information that needs to go into the data base, so that when the self-service is available they can very quickly go in, enter the information and be enrolled in a matter of hours.”