New Tax Bill Comes with Enforcement

Mark Lizarraga

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the Tax Administration and Procedure Bill which ultimately seeks to increase government revenues. The bill merges the Income Tax and General Sales Tax departments. The new law also seeks to strengthen the collection of taxes and enforce penalties for companies and entities which have and continue to evade paying taxes as explained by senators Michael Peyrefitte and Mark Lizarraga.

Mark Lizarraga, Senator for Private Sector

“We know, let’s be honest that there are a lot of people in our county that still evade and avoid taxes and that is not fair to those of us who do contribute to the tax base. It robs the government of revenues, it makes the existing tax rates higher and it is not fair. It is not a level playing field. It affects those businesses with undue cost that are paying taxes. So we make no apologies for supporting any move that would level the playing field.”

Michael Peyrefitte

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“At sometime the situation will catch up with the current law and then at that point the more stringent, more forceful aspects of this law will come in to play. I believe it is indeed that simplistic. People who run businesses it is part of running a business to know when and what percentage of taxes you are to pay. I am a lawyer, if or when I go back to private practice I will have to know what amount of taxes I would have to pay, when is the deadline for paying them. I simply have to make sure that I calculate how much money I make, pay my percentage and report that to the tax department on time. I mean, there is no difficult in that. Nobody should have any difficult in doing that. If you are running a business that is complex, then hire a professional to do that for you. You taxes have to be paid and I don’t see any difficult with the law trying to crack down on people who evade paying taxes.”