Chicken smuggling troublesome for GRA – Sattaur

Feb 13, 2014 News

The smuggling of chicken into Guyana, particularly at the eastern border, was a troublesome area for the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) last year. As such, GRA extended its operations to Corriverton to effectively monitor the flow of contraband goods.
This is according to Khurshid Sattaur, Commissioner General of GRA during a recent interview.
Sattaur emphasized that law enforcement is a critical area that complements the work of the audit department.
Law enforcement officers, who work in the fields, primarily target persons who evade customs duties. They investigate the evasion of other taxes as well but that information is disseminated to the Intelligence Unit for action, he added.
“We have dealt in a lot of areas that have been evading taxes based on smuggling very high valued items. For example alcoholic beverages where the duty could be very significant…Another troublesome area for us which was prevalent last year is the smuggling of chicken,” Sattaur said.
According to Sattaur, the Authority’s work in intercepting and even stopping the passage of contraband goods into Guyana was very successful.
He said, “I think in excess of $150M was realized in quite a lot of cases. We report these matters to the task force.”
Sattaur said that GRA is part of the Task Force on Smuggling of Contraband, which convenes monthly and is chaired by the Minister of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee. He noted that valuable information of what takes place in the GRA in these operations are shared with the task force.
In addition, GRA partners with other law enforcement agencies such as the Guyana Police Force, the Coast Guard and CANU. He explained that sometimes the work of the GRA does not result in revenue collection, but the apprehension of persons engaged in nefarious activities.
However, revenue collection remains a primary function of the GRA and the audit department plays an integral role in this regard. During, 2013 the GRA accomplished collecting in excess of $1.2B in revenue because of auditing.
“And, I cannot quantify the other benefits that would have accrued from auditing. As I mentioned, if you do not have auditing, the level of voluntarily compliance would diminish significantly,” he noted.
Sattaur emphasized that audit is a major and key function of any tax organization because without taxpayers being subjected to an audit or any scrutiny of their returns filed voluntarily, the danger exists of their returns not meeting the required standard for submission.
“Last year we took major steps in revamping the audit department. What we did was take out all the examination functions that were previously conducted within the tax operations services for example in the VAT, Income Tax and Customs and put those functions within the audit departments not to have duplications,” he said.
He related that the audit department has had a massive increase in staff and its mandate has been extended much wider.

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Chicken smuggling troublesome for GRA – Sattaur

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