Commissioner says Income Tax Dept. can’t keep up with “creative accountants”

It’s been a long while since the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives has gotten such a workout, but then again it’s not every day that the government proposes to overhaul the tax system. The National Assembly has announced that a further committee meeting will be held in Belmopan on June seventeenth and any citizens wishing to express their opinions on the new tax bill should write to the clerk or show up in person. The debate over the proposed business tax, which would replace corporate income tax, continued last night on Channel Five’s “One On One” show. One important point, which had previously received little notice, was why a change is needed in the first place?

Q: “Is the system not working as it is right now?”

Geraldine Davis, Commissioner of Income Tax

“There are two major things. The department is not equipped with the people persons, the people bodies, whatever you want to call it – with sufficient human resources, qualified or equipped to take on the guides. So that is the first thing. We have a certain level of staff trying to compete or trying to find all the creative accounting that the qualified accountant produce so that is a problem first of all. So that poses a great deal of difficulty for us.

The second thing is that even when we make assessments we have a bit of difficulty collecting the revenues and it falls into arrears. We do not have the capability or the facilities to chase up on these arrears fast enough. We recognize that there is a dollar out there and B.T.L. will get its share and the electricity company will get its share and unless we keep knocking on the tax payer’s door they forget about our share.”