Work by GRA enforcement team sees 75 more city businesses paying VAT

Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Godfrey Statia has stated that the work of a special enforcement team has seen nearly 75 businesses operating in central Georgetown being made to register for the payment of Value Added Tax (VAT).

Last month, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) had raised concerns about legitimate businesses being made non-competitive by several foreign owned companies who are not charging VAT on their products though they are eligible to do so.

PSC Chairman Eddie Boyer had explained to Stabroek News that the PSC had received complaints to this effect from several of its members and sought to address the issue at a meeting with the Ministry of Finance.

Statia, who was present at that meeting, noted that the GRA had already recognized that this was the case and instituted the necessary steps to ensure compliance with VAT laws and submissions.

These steps included the deployment of a special enforcement team which utilized third party information, decoy buyers, importation documents, GRA’s database and visits to the businesses to identify those which were operating outside of the law. He explained that the exercise was ongoing even as those businesses already identified have had fines and penalties imposed for past violations.

In February, both the PSC and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) had called on GRA to work to create a just system where its supervisory functions are performed efficiently and effectively.

In response to reports that local businessmen were concerned about competition from business owned by Chinese nationals both organisations had said that they were more concerned about unfair competition.

“We are not ethnocentric. The issue is not competition, it is unfair competition and that can come from businesses operated by persons of any nationality,” then president of the GCCI, Vishnu Doerga had told Stabroek News.

He had stressed that for his organization unfair competition was a cause for serious concern noting that the aim was to operate in a level playing field.

Boyer had endorsed these comments adding that the PSC had not received any complaints about unfair competition from Chinese businesses.

“It’s a non-issue for us but if there are complaints of that nature let the GRA investigate it,” Boyer said adding that there were just too many factors affecting price for him to comment on variations in price among city businesses.

However, he had stressed that one area affecting the market was businesses failing to charge and pay VAT. “Many businesses are not paying VAT. GRA needs to investigate that. There are millions being lost in taxes and businesses which are paying VAT are placed at disadvantage. We really need there to be better supervision of this aspect of the tax,” Boyer had explained.