Dear Editor,
The Guyana Revenue Authority has recently demonstrated its extreme backwardness in its tax collecting operations by rejecting a cheque for property and income taxes because the taxpayer did not have a Tax Identification Number (TIN). The taxpayer, who lives in the USA, provided the revenue authority, through his agent, with the number of his passport, associated receipts of payments of insurance, rates and taxes, and the file number which has been used for several years to store his tax returns.
What is more contributory to the identification of this taxpayer is that the officials who rejected the cheque know the taxpayer very well.
The amount of taxes being paid was well over one million Guyana dollars. But it was refused even though the TIN was recently introduced and there are no arrangements to assign TINs to overseas taxpayers.
Civil servants need to be trained to use their judgment in applying rules. The TIN, as the term indicates, identifies the taxpayer.
Unless there are computer programming arrangements that make previous methods of identification inadmissable, commonsense suggests that the payment should be accepted once the identification of the taxpayer has been established beyond any reasonable doubt.
There was no doubt in this instance. Why then the rejection? The only explanation is that the officials behaved like robots. If there are computer programming arrangements that require TINs, then the revenue authority should have a database available to assign non-duplicatable TINs to taxpayers who do not have a TIN.
The inflexibility of the civil servants seems to reflect a culture of fear that comes from an overpowering authoritarianism.
That overpowering authoritarianism has its origin in a constitution that gives the President excessive power in appointing and promoting public servants. Thought is paralysed in a climate of fear and efficiency suffers.
A democracy cannot develop with robot-like public servants. Lee Kuan Yew attributed the extraordinary development of Singapore to the competence of the civil servants. Checks and balances are an important aspect of democracy. The rigidity in the behaviour of the civil servants reflects an absence of balance.
The immediate solution that comes to mind is training. But more than training is required in the Guyana situation. A culture of public service independence is necessary. The very structure of the public service is backward. And that backwardness is in evidence from the top to the bottom.
Yours faithfully,
Clarence F Ellis
