The Commissioner –General explains

Jun 11, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,

The Guyana Revenue Authority wishes to respond to an accusation in which the writer Mr. Singh, is seeking answers on the delayed receipt of Mortgage Interest Relief (MIR) Refunds due to him.
The GRA takes this opportunity to thank the person for writing on the matter, as a concerned taxpayer and wishes to apologize for any inconvenience experienced by him due to the delay as well as any tone of response he may have interpreted via telephone by any staffer of the MIR office who may not have been knowledgeable about the status of his refund. GRA has various Departments, each, dealing with separate tax matters and some Departments depend on the processing features of another. Therefore, making calls to the Agency does not necessarily mean that the employee who answers the telephone would be in the position at the exact moment to provide a status as there are thousands of taxpayers who would call the Agency daily. In some cases as well, for specific and confidential tax matters, taxpayers are urged to visit the Agency themselves. Otherwise, GRA’s Communication & Tax Advisory Services Section is the Division that usually responds to taxpayers and may follow up on a specific case to provide answers and information to the public on a case by case basis, depending on the nature of the matter at hand.
The GRA must note, however, that it is puzzled as to whether (based on the way his letter was crafted) the writer is speaking on his and his family’s behalf only or whether he is representing a group of persons as he constantly made reference to ‘we”, indicating a seemingly collective group yet signed the letter using his name only.
Nevertheless, the Agency wishes to firstly advise that it does not invent rules for the taxpaying public in any adhoc manner as may have been insinuated in his first paragraph ( …..’until such time that the GRA thinks we should renew again’….) since GRA can only administer the Laws crafted in Parliament. As can be recalled, in 2015, new amendments were made which affected the Law governing the process for Mortgage Interest Relief. This resulted in the taxpayer being required to file an Income Tax Return and including his claim for any Refund on same. If he/she had already begun to receive MIR Refunds claimed in the previous year or in the early part of 2015 (which was the case of Mr. Singh), then the remainder of the Relief for the rest of that year would have had to be made based on the new Amendment. Consequently, Mr. Singh would have had to claim the balance of the Relief on the Income Tax Return Form submitted for the year of Assessment 2016.
GRA wishes to assure Mr. Singh and any other concerned taxpayer claiming MIR Refunds, that Refunds for a large section of the populace have already been processed and received by those Taxpayers. However, with the large influx of Taxpayers in the last months and the thousands of Income Tax Returns received and MIR claims made, many of these are still being processed in our system. We urge that the remainder of persons whose returns have not yet been processed, continue to exercise patience and make checks with the Tax Advisory Services Section. GRA wishes to assure that all taxpayers (including Mr. Singh) will receive their refunds once they have satisfied the requirements.
Ingrid Griffith
Commissioner-General (ag)

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