The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business

Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Value-Added Tax (VAT) Education Task Force’s remit came to an end on Tuesday after achieving most of its mandate, one member saying: “The results speak for themselves.”

Edison Sumner, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, said the Task Force had successfully bridged the communications gap between the Government and the private sector.

He added that its success presented a model that could be used to assist future dialogue on national issues. 

“Our work came to an end as of Tuesday. We were on assignment up to the end of June and that would have formally come to an end on Tuesday,” Mr Sumner, the Task Force’s co-chair, said.

“The Task Force was appointed in October of last year to assist the Government with their communications efforts in bringing education and awareness, not only to the  private sector business community but to the general population as well.”

Mr Sumner said that through its efforts, the Government was able to realise a greater-than-anticipated  number of  VAT registrants.

“We were also pleased that we saw a higher than expected level of compliance as it relates to filings and returns for those companies, where we would have seen, for quarterly fliers for example, there was around a 95 per cent compliance rate,” Mr Sumner said.

“For those filing on a  monthly basis we saw a near 90 per cent compliance rate, the difference being those companies would not have had any VAT returns to file but would have just submitted their reports anyway.”

Mr Sumner added: “I think the work that we did brought tremendous assistance to the Government in disseminating information about VAT, getting the business community to buy into it, getting them to become compliant in registration and then in filings and returns.

“We continue to field questions and take the responses we have been hearing from the private sector businesses back to the Government, and vice versa.

“I believe we were able to successfully bridge the communications gap between the private sector businesses and the Government to get each side to understand what the concerns were of the other side.”

Mr Sumner said the Task Force success presented a model that could be used in future private-public sector dialogue. He also credited the Government, and in particular the Ministry of Finance, with whom he said the Task Force had a good working relationship.

“I don’t want to take anything away form the Government side. We had a very good working relationship with the financial secretary, the minister of state for finance and the Prime Minister, their staff and other technocrats who were able to provide us and keep us current with information coming out of that office,” he added.