Late income tax returns will attract penalties - GRA

Late income tax returns will attract penalties – GRA

May 10, 2014 News

Self employed persons are not exempt

For those persons who have missed the April 30 deadline to file their tax returns, the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has set up tax sites so that individuals could easily submit their tax returns.
Unfortunately however, those persons who have missed the deadline will have to face the penalties.
GRA’s Communications Officer, Melissa Baird, explained, “We realized that a lot of persons have not submitted their returns so we have actually extended the tax sites but all those persons who are now submitting after the deadline are liable to the penalty.”
She said that if a taxpayer fails to pay income tax on or before the due date, the taxpayer shall be

The GRA tax site within the lobby of the City Mall on Camp Street

liable to a penalty of two percent of the unpaid amount for each month or part thereof that the tax remains unpaid during the first three months after the due date.
After the three months the penalty percentage will increase to three percent and four percent after six months, with five percent per month onwards.
Should an individual fail to submit income tax then the Commissioner General will send you a demand notice which comes with a five percent compound interest penalty.
In explaining how the compound interest is applied, she said, “It’s the figure you have now to pay plus the interest for not paying. Next month it’s now calculated as that and the following month it calculated higher so it’s going up all the time.”
Once the payment of one’s taxes is not made then the figure will continue to increase.
The tax sites she outlined will last for an approximate timeframe of two weeks and once the amount of submissions is reduced they will limit late submissions to the GRA headquarters, Camp Street, Georgetown.
She said that two tax sites have been established one at the Headquarters itself and the other located within the lobby at the City Mall. Baird said, “We are currently toying with the idea of maybe taking it further next week based on the response that we received.”
She said that the tax sites were able to deal with 19,000 plus persons so far who have submitted beyond the April 30, deadline.
Baird explained that the biggest concern that GRA has with respect to filing income tax is non submission of tax returns for self employed persons.
She said that non submission of returns by self employed persons leads to a certain amount of unfairness because the tax burdens are not equally distributed when self employed taxpayers are non compliant “because those persons who are with PAYE (Pay As You Earn) they don’t have a choice it’s coming out of their salary but the self employed persons are expected to make an honest declaration to provide their documents, a lot of them are not compliant,” said Baird.
She outlined that this year GRA is hoping to bring more persons who are self employed to the tax bracket.
Baird did caution that there are legal penalties associated with self employed persons who are non compliant with their tax returns. She said that their information is within the database and those persons who are non complaint GRA will be targeted.
“We really don’t like to use the strong arm approach but we think it is time that we really utilize the Courts, so we are going to go after those persons and we are going to take them to Court.”
According to GRA’s Communications Officers, “We try to make it easy as possible for some persons; we have a death management section. If it’s a case where persons are willing to make their payments but they can’t do it all at one point then of course you can come into us, into the death management department and you agree on a payment plan which will allow you to pay of that amount with a period of time.
She said however if you default on that a second chance would be given in that regard.
She said that at no point in the submissions of tax will officers will be receiving any type of cash or cheques “any monetary transaction will have to be done at the office or they can utilize the bill payment facilities because we have partnered with Bill Express, Republic Bank and Demerara Bank so you have your banking facilities available.”
Baird said that online banking (E-banking) is also available for the comfort of persons to pay at home through their online bank sites which they are currently expanding.

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