By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
The Government has yet to bring any prosecutions against delinquent Value-Added Tax (VAT) payers, while confirming last night that more than 80 per cent of quarterly filers had met the April 28 deadline for their first returns.
The Ministry of Finance’s VAT Unit, in a statement released last night, said there had been “very healthy compliance” by the estimated 6,000 registrants filing their March and 2015 first quarter returns.
The VAT Unit said more than 90 per cent of its several hundred monthly filers continued to meet filing deadlines, although there had been “some tardiness” in ensuring that due payments for March were submitted by April 28.
Some VAT monies had taken an “extra few days” to reach the Treasury’s bank accounts, but the VAT Unit said more than 80 per cent of quarterly filers - businesses with annual turnovers between $400,000 to $5 million - had “satisfied the obligation” to submit their first-ever returns.
John Rolle, the acting VAT comptroller, told Tribune Business in a recent interview that while the Government had yet to bring court prosecutions against delinquent businesses, it was now going to “the next step” with non-compliant monthly filers.
He explained that companies with annual turnovers exceeding $5 million, which had failed to submit their returns and/or payments, were now receiving notices that the Government was assessing the VAT it believed was due for them and placing this “on record”.
“We have not brought prosecutions, but have gone through an earlier round of penalties for persons late in filing reports for February,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business. “Some were late for both January and February.
“We’re now, for the very large taxpayers, going to the next step and identifying the very few that have not submitted returns.
“We have already made assessments of what the returns should be. That’s the communication they’re receiving formally. If you’re not doing it voluntarily, and assessment will be made and placed on the record, so we can escalate that process.”
Mr Rolle said only “a small number of businesses” had failed to file their monthly returns for January and/or February, and the VAT Unit was now making “direct contact” with them to discover why.
The VAT Unit last night confirmed it was “aggressively following up” non-reporters, and added that it was “encouraged” that many were “in the process” of completing their returns.
And more than 50 per cent of voluntary VAT registrants have completed the returns and payment process.
“We now have a plan of action in pace to individually reach out to each remaining firm in the coming days, and to offer quick assistance where it is needed,” said a VAT Unit spokesperson.
“The cross-section of registrants from throughout the Bahamas in the quarterly filing exercise has demonstrated that small businesses, in particular, made great efforts to maintain the accounting records needed to compile their submissions.
“Now, our immediate priority is to provide more training before the second quarter’s reports are due. By then, we also plan to have a more simplified report form in place to facilitate the process.”
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