Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter by Mr Khurshid Sattaur, the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority captioned “The Guyana Revenue Authority has made improvements in tax collection over the years and will implement VAT efficiently” in response to my letter captioned “The GRA couldn’t administer the Consumption Tax so how will it administer the VAT.”
The Commissioner General missed the thrust of my concerns. He needs to provide statistics that will prove whether or not “vast improvements were made in tax collection over the years”.
His statement that we “need to appreciate the difficulty (the GRA has) to police the tax obligation of the self-employed persons” contradicts his first assertion that there has been vast improvement in tax collection. Could the CG publish the figures regarding the number of persons and taxes paid by each class of taxpayer (hire cars, trucks, mini bus owners and drivers, farmers – rice, cash crops etc. etc.) that paid taxes for the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 and put to rest this contention.
The response given by the CG with regard to my claim that there was poor administration of the Consumption Tax is revealing since the CG has claimed that “the characteristics of the C/tax lent itself to difficulties to effectively administer such a system in Guyana.” Sir, my contention is that the C/tax system, while not perfect, is much more structured and easier to police than the VAT system. Imagine, Consumption Tax which is collected at ports of entry before goods are cleared and ex factory before goods enter the market (for local manufacturers) is hard for the CG to police, but it would be easier to police VAT. Compare about 10 ports of entry and at most 300 manufacturers for C/tax as against a figure of about 2500 potential VAT registrants.
Yours faithfully
A. Khan
