Guyana Observer News

Two companies owe coffers $12B in taxes

Tuesday, 09 March 2010

- GRA urged to reduce risk of fraud

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Two companies owe the Guyana Revenue Authority in excess of $12B in taxes but complex court cases may see no monies coming into the treasury for a while. In one case, the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has been dueling in court for almost 15 years now. In the other, for over five years. Yesterday, Commissioner General of the GRA, Khurshid Sattaur, before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), disclosed that at least one of the unnamed companies may be fighting its case before of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Sattaur was at the time being grilled over the 2006 Auditor General’s Report on GRA. The official complained that the minor court cases take as long as three to four years to be handled for persons failing to file tax returns. The fine, on conviction, is $15,000. Along with the Commissioner-General were several of his managers.

One of the ways forward may be the use of a special court to look after matters involving GRA cases, it was suggested.
The issue of the fraud at the entity also came up. According to Sattaur, GRA had taken a policy stand sometime back not to accept personal cheques. Businesses conducting business have to either pay cash or with a manager’s cheque.
However, with some banks charging a percentage of the total amount of the manager’s cheque as their fee, many businesses are opting to pay cash.
This has proven a problem for GRA as was evidenced by a major $300M fraud which was discovered last year. According to the Commissioner-General, the staffers involved had targeted the large amount of cash that GRA has to collect.
One business which was blacklisted from using cheques was cited as paying tens of millions of dollars in cash. And this is a problem that the GRA has to contend with.
This same thing again happened recently when over $600,000 was stolen by a GRA cashier at a city wharf.
PNCR’s Shadow Finance Minister, Winston Murray, who was among the Parliamentarians questioning Sattaur, urged that the entity examine ways to reduce the cash transactions.
Chairperson of the PAC, Volda Lawrence, suggested that the entity may have to consider shifts for cashiers where a balancing system will have to be done at certain intervals to reduce the possibilities of theft.

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