Tax-free vacation allowance for private sector workers

Nov 29, 2017 News

On Monday, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan unveiled Budget 2018 before his colleagues in the National Assembly. One of the budget measures spoken about is tax-free vacation allowance for private sector employees.
Jordan told the House that currently, public sector employees enjoy a tax-free vacation allowance, regardless of whether they spend their vacation in Guyana or abroad.
On the other hand, he noted that private sector employees are only given the allowance to the extent of the cost of the passage to travel abroad. “I propose to remove this anomaly, thereby allowing private sector employees to enjoy the vacation allowance tax-free and to use it as they see fit,” said Jordan.
The Minister said that as in the case of public sector employees, a tax-free vacation allowance to a private sector employee will be allowed up to a maximum of one month of the employee’s base salary.
Jordan said that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) will scrutinize these allowances closely to ensure that the previous abuse of this benefit-in-kind, where employees were being paid huge vacation allowances, in lieu of salaries, does not recur.
The measure takes effect from January 1, 2018.

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