GRA continues to go after companies not filing returns

Jul 13, 2017 News

In the year 2015, there were 2,955 active companies registered with the Guyana Revenue Authority. Of this amount, 2,169 did not file their returns. When individuals or companies would have failed to do this, the GRA would issue letters of Demand.
To engage these delinquent companies on the issue, the GRA has said that it continues to issue such letters and that the process is ongoing.
Based on information contained in the 2015 Audit Report that was dealt with on Monday with officials of the GRA before the Public Accounts Committee, in 2014, the revenue authority issued 1,162 letters of Demand, in 2015, 1,493 and as of September 2016, 141 letters of Demand were issued.
To better the address the issue, it was noted that the GRA had adopted a risk management approach to prioritise the high risk taxpayers with great revenue implications.
One of the issues concerning the matter which came up in the PAC hearing was the failure of GRA to present the Companies Tax Return Register to be produced for audit by the Auditor General’s Office.
To this, the Commissioner General of GRA, Godfrey Statia said that he could not understand why the register was not presented. He said that it is a computerised register and a simple print-out from the Total Revenue Integrated Processing System (TRIPS) would have provided that information.
It was explained by an official from the Auditor General’s office that when the register was needed there was not a specific department in GRA that dealt with corporation tax. Hence, there was no department head from whom the information could be requested.
The information was then gathered from a number of departments, regarding the number of Demands issued and a list of the registered companies. It was explained that the register may not have been supplied based on a possible breakdown in communication. However, it was assured that the register will be provided to the Auditor General’s office.
Statia said that this occurrence will be a thing of the past. He said that he would have given the Auditor General the permission to audit the TRIPS system. He said that in the future, any information that is needed from TRIPS and is brought to his attention, the Auditor General’s office will be given access.
The Commissioner-General was commended for his efforts to ensure that issues affecting the GRA are dealt with. Chairman of the PAC, Irfaan Ali said that in some instances, accounting officers of government agencies fail to recognise that problems exist within their entities and therefore a lot of issues are not addressed and remedied.

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