Godfrey Statia and Khurshid Sattaur: A comparison

Mar 27, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Godfrey Statia, the head of the GRA, has announced that he has under the GRA’s radar, 1000 persons who may not be paying their obligation to the tax collector. What I am about to write may sound like an exaggeration, but for me, this is one of the most encouraging administrative decisions coming from a State that since Independence has allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to go uncollected because of the naked and shameless class structure of this country.
Here is a story I was told by Elvin McDavid. President Burnham wanted a large building owned by a family business to use as a government office. He called a price and the matriarch said that was nowhere near what she had in mind. Burnham said he cited that low figure because for decades he knew her business companies never declared profits even though her assets were in the billions of dollars. Burnham then decided he would do an audit of the lady’s extensive holdings. Her reaction was to swiftly agree to Burnham’s price.
For decades since Independence, wealthy citizens of this country have evaded taxes and the burden has fallen on companies and employees that have to go through PAYE. Guyana has a new tax chief, and one of the optimistic characteristics of this new dispensation is that he is not familiar with the labyrinthine conspirators; this was a staple feature of the GRA before 2015.
If Godfrey Statia can maintain a no-nonsense, professional, dedicated, nationalistic attitude to tax collection, then Guyana will not have to beg the IDB for a mere million US dollars to build a cottage hospital in some outlying area. At the current exchange rate, a million American dollars is 210 million Guyanese. The Treasury is losing billions because the wealthy are not paying up at all. I stress the words, “at all.”
Here is what Rawle Lucas, the chairman of the GRA wrote in December 2015 in his Stabroek News column; “It is unimaginable that the property tax, which is directed at the largest asset base (income, moveable and immoveable property and rights) in the country, contributes virtually nothing to government revenues. It is also surprising that with the level of business activity taking place in Guyana, the miscellaneous taxes also seem meaningless to the economy by way of revenue collection.”
Even if you did not pass mathematics at CXC, you can still understand how slack the GRA was under Khurshid Sattaur, if you do the elementary thing that I am about to do. Prior to 2014, property tax was payable on assets of an individual that exceed seven million dollars. Now take your calculator and do the math.
Start with fancy buildings, both business places and dwelling houses, in Queenstown. In many instances, the businesses are owned by single individuals. The next stop is Bel Air Park followed by Bel Air Springs, Subryanville, Prashad Nagar, Lamaha Gardens, Atlantic Gardens, Happy Acres. These are just a few of the suburbs up the East Coast. Up the East Bank you have hugely expensive houses in Houston. There is D’Aguiar Park – where Roger Khan bought a residence for dozens of millions – Nandy Park, Continental Park, Eccles Gardens etc.
If you do the calculation starting from 7 million Guyana dollars, with those houses and the types of vehicles you find in those places, how does one square that reality with what the GRA board chairman wrote in his column about zero contribution of property tax to the GRA? One assumes that as board chairman, he has to see the annual report from the GRA boss, so he has to know what he is talking about. This obviously put Khurshid Sattaur in the spotlight.
What had he been doing for the fifteen years that he was the GRA’s boss? Could it be that Sattaur collected a serious amount of property taxes and the GRA chairman did not know what he wrote? If he did not know what he wrote, then he was misleading the nation with that staggering statement. It would bring into question his scholarship and thus his continuation as GRA board chairman.
However, if Rawle Lucas is right that property tax did not contribute at all to the Treasury prior to the assumption of Lucas as board chairman and Statia as GRA head, then it is most logical and commonsensical to question the performance of Khurshid Sattaur.
From 2014, property tax started at 44 million Guyana dollars. If the GRA finds that you were evading property tax, it can compel you to send it returns for the past seven years. I believe Godfrey Statia knows what he has to do. I hope.

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