By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
The Government appears to be “headed in the right direction” on achieving its $300 million Value-Added Tax (VAT) annual revenue target, a top finance official adding that the “fairly broad base” of registrants gives the Government comfort its projections will be met.
John Rolle, financial aecretary in the Ministry of Finance, stated that that given the initial results, the Government appears moving towards its $300 million annual revenue goal.
“We think that with the amount of businesses that registered, and the experiences we have seen in terms of the VAT filings and what Customs is collecting, that we are headed in the right direction,” he said.
“We have completed the January month. Once we get to April we would have completed the filing process for virtually every VAT registrant. The first level of comfort in how the Government collections will look is connected with the fact that we have the coverage of the number of businesses that should be registered for VAT.
“On that basis we think the base that is being used to estimate the Government’s revenue collection is a fairly broad base, and that gives some comfort in terms of the revenue collection potential.”
Mr Rolle said that with regards to VAT compliance, the filing of timely returns was critical for businesses to aviod fines.
“In terms of the approach to compliance and enforcement, the obligation to file a VAT return is very critical, so businesses that have slippage in terms of getting their return in on time - meaning that they have also not made a payment - that is a case where those businesses can expect to see fines and penalties levied, unless there was a case where they had requested and were given the right to take a few extra days to file the returns,” Mr Rolle said.
“If you file late, the penalty is first of all the sanctioning of being late, plus the Government calculates interest from the date that it should have received the return. For every day that return is late there is a certain amount of interest.”
Mr Rolle added: “The other area where the penalties were automatic, and continue to be automatic, is where businesses are showing up and should have registered because it was mandatory.
“Whenever they show themselves, there is still a penalty for that. The business which does it voluntarily is always at an advantage in terms of the severity of the penalties relative to businesses who may be detected at some point by the VAT Department as having not registered.”
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