GRA admits its services need improvement

Jun 23, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,

The Guyana Revenue Authority has noted the Editorial in the June 22, 2016 Edition of your Newspaper (Titled “The GRA and its continuing woes’) expressing the Editor’s view on mainly the services offered at our Agency and your continuous monitoring of our functions and operations from whence the Agency was established to the present.
GRA is thankful that (as the major tax collection agency in the country) the newspaper displays special interest in the well-being of the Agency and its operations as well as its ability to adequately or not adequately serve the tax-paying public. GRA must emphasize that as a tax-collection agency, our major goal will always be to ensure that we achieve our target set out by Government and we will continue to encourage voluntary compliance by the public in this regard. This, we fervently believe, will allow us to not only meet that target but ultimately enable the country’s economy to grow and the provision of social and other services will simultaneously be made possible.
The GRA is cognizant as well that our services to the public need to be improved in order for us to be in synch with our voluntary compliance strategy and we are also grateful that your newspaper recognized our human resource factor. This is why we welcome you monitoring our performance and we assure you that complaints and other concerns expressed, whether on social or other media, have not ‘fallen on deaf ears’ though we have not been able to respond to each and every one of them.
We wish to advise each taxpayer that in order to avoid some of the lines and waiting time at the GRA, it is always better if persons can firstly visit our website and/or listen to our programmes where guidelines on all our procedures and processes are highlighted and requirements for various services listed. This, we assure, will save persons much of time they would have otherwise spent at the GRA Headquarters itself. In addition, a number of our Forms are available online for printing. GRA offers to the public License Transaction and Customs Checker services as well so that taxpayers can check on the status of their transactions.
As we write, our Training Division, in collaboration with other professional agencies are conducting customer service/ communication skills training with staff and this has been ongoing over the last few weeks. This, we believe will assist our staff with the training needed to deal with the public in a more professional manner in future. Besides this, our Tax Advisory Services Division has been meeting with various Agencies and conducting workshops to ensure that the tax-paying public is guided on the various tax procedures. Each year as well, GRA has reached out further to the public by conducting tax sites to make it easier for persons to submit their Returns during that busy tax period.
Notwithstanding these approaches, GRA is equipped with a taxpayer-friendly Division-the Communication and Tax Advisory Services Division. This Division, due to constraints, is unable to deal with all members of the public on a face-to-face basis, daily on the ground floor. This is the area where we must admit the majority of criticism originates, during transactions. In addition, it must be noted that some taxpayers behave in a hostile manner towards staff, including our security officers, and this is not condoned. Nevertheless, we continue to be polite since this must be done when serving the public. Thus, Customer Service and Communication Skills Training will always be necessary. This, as we noted above, is currently being addressed.
As to the other concerns expressed by your newspaper regarding political appointees and discrimination in tax collection, we wish to assure you that the Agency, currently equipped with a new Governing Board, is striving to fulfill our role as a semi-autonomous Agency. We are in the process of appointing a new Commissioner-General and with limited staff, the GRA continues to work hard daily, despite challenges, to ensure that we meet our collection target for the betterment of Guyana. We also continue to strive for excellence, while at the same time, ensure that the taxpayers and other stakeholders are duly respected.
Ingrid Griffith
Commissioner-General (ag)

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