BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Caribbean Organization of Tax Administrators (COTA) is looking at crafting a plan to deal with those persons or entities that are delinquent in paying their fair share of contribution to their respective government.
Guyana has assumed the presidency of the General Counsel of COTA and the Deputy Commissioner General, Hema Khan, who is in St. Kitts for the 24th General Assembly and Technical Conference, told SKNVibes that they are trying to see as a region how best they could improve the compliance of citizens.
Khan disclosed that they have found instances where citizens and residents have “been using our own laws against us”, a problem she noted needs to be addressed urgently.
The Deputy Commissioner General stressed that, as a region, there is a need to share ideas and initiatives that could assist COTA to reinvent the wheel in their tax collection.
“We can actually share our experiences and try to achieve voluntary compliance as against forced compliance. You see, this is because it is more costly to go after persons who are non-compliant than if we can try to support them to voluntary compliance – both in terms of e-filing, submission of their returns online and payments online.”
Going further, Khan intimated that they have found both the citizens and the business community are delinquent in paying their share of taxes.
She emphasized that it is often difficult to say exactly the level of non-compliance from the business community and the citizenry.
But she did indicate that it is believed that it is more regular among the business community, noting that they have more resources at their disposal to hire lawyers, auditors and accountants to aid in circumventing the laws.
Questioned on what could possibly be done to militate against non-compliance, she noted that they are pushing “voluntary compliance to make it easier for the taxpayers”.
Meanwhile, Comptroller of the St. Kitts and Nevis Inland Revenue Department, Edward Gift disclosed that they have seen a slowdown in compliance rate across the broad spectrum of taxes.
To address that problem, Gift stated that they have developed a multifaceted approach, which includes strategies to make it easier for taxpayers to pay their share of contributions.
“We have restructured some of our operations in high risk, where we are trying to target some of those taxpayers who we have deemed very high risk that they wouldn’t pay, and to ensure that we reach out to them in the spirit of cooperation and get them to pay their taxes on time.”
He reiterated that local delinquency is across all areas, whether those who are paying property taxes, business or corporation taxes - VAT.
“So, we have seen some slowdown in the compliance rate but that is something that we are addressing,” Gift added.
