Dear Editor,
The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) continues to view with grave concern, the fact that journalists would seem to have a hidden agenda to sensationalize the reports they present in their news stories on the agency.
Only recently the Office of the Commissioner General (CG) was misquoted in a state television and radio news report as referring to the achievement of revenue collection for 2014 as not being on target. This was no doubt reported with a view to putting the GRA in a negative light concerning its main area of performance, which is revenue collection.
Quite recently also, the former Auditor General, now political activist, Mr Anand Goolsarran, who has a weekly political column in the Stabroek News, deliberately misquoted and omitted vital information in an extensive article on the Revenue Authority and the CG, in which he was also highly critical of the CG’s stewardship of the agency.
In the views of the agency, it was deliberately and maliciously done to paint a negative image of the organisation and its Head, Mr Khurshid Sattaur, whose tenure at the helm so far, of under twelve years, has seen the phenomenal growth of revenue collection from $41.5 billion in 2003 to a record-breaking figure in excess of $126.5 billion representing an over 205% increase. Notable has been the revenue performance of corporate taxes and PAYE taxes which have seen in excess of a 206% and 60% increase respectively over these years.
These phenomenal increases in the area of the revenue collection of the agency have been as a result of the direct targeting of private sector businesses for false declarations in their imports and in the inaccurate reporting of their income detected through the highly effective work conducted by the Revenue Protection and Audit and Verification Units which, on an annual basis, rake in an excess of $2.5 billion in additional revenues. In addition, revenues are being garnered from many private sector businesses that continue to withhold the payment of their taxes or that of their employees or VAT payers, even though such payments were due and even in some cases as their returns suggest, such payments were made. This area, for which the GRA is proud of its performance, is mainly responsible for the collection of in excess of $5 billion in taxes every year.
It is to be noted that while on an annual basis no new taxes are introduced and, on the contrary, the rates of taxes have been reduced in respect of the two major revenue categories, personal income tax and corporate taxes down from 33 1/3 % to 30% ; and 45% and 35% to 40% and 30% respectively, and economic growth did not exceed more than an average 6% percentage points annually, yet the average increase of the revenues has shown a remarkable performance of over 11% on an annual basis reflecting increasing levels of performance year after year.
The CG continues to bemoan the fact, however, that even though these facts were presented to a journalist through a telephone conversation, yet the Guyana Times reporter sought to refer very extensively in an article covered in its Friday December 5, 2014 edition on the lack of cooperation with the Private Sector, no doubt in order to sensationalize the report more than anything else.
It is no secret that, increasingly, there is a high frequency of private sector businesses offering bribes to tax officers not to unveil their fraudulent reporting; and more alarmingly, that billions are granted in concessions to businesses in the area of machinery and equipment and raw materials that are either diverted for other purposes or sold to persons who are not entitled to such benefits. The GRA spends millions of its rather scarce resources as well as the officers’ valuable time every year to police such criminal activities. This does not include the billions that are being evaded annually from fraudulent claims for VAT refunds even as many businesses continue to engage in the very insidious practice by the private sector of offering not to charge VAT on condition not to provide receipts of such sales.
It is to be noted, that in a recent meeting held with the private sector commission umbrella organizations and the government, at which the senior management of the GRA was present and which the Minister of Finance chaired, a major section of the meeting was to discuss how the private sector can better access more efficiently concessions and duty free on various items that generally attract taxes for the ordinary citizens of the country.
The CG is of the view that there is a strong correlation between corruption in the agency and the incidence of aiding and abetting by the private sector which is responsible for a significant loss in revenues. In a recent publication in one of the tabloids, in an article entitled ‘Stop attacking citizens who identify corruption,’ the Private Sector Commission Head is reported to have expressed concern over the perceived level of corruption.
While the GRA head applauds Mr Persaud for attributing corruption in the public sector to the support of some members of the business community, and calls upon the private companies to hold themselves to a higher standard and desist from spreading this cancer in Guyana, the CG is of the view that not enough private sector captains in industry and commerce who represent a larger section of the business community are prepared to condemn this scourge, choosing instead to remain silent at the expense of all blame being levelled at the door of the public sector, including the highly controversial Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International.
Reporters who understand the English language would know that the placement of a comma makes a whole lot of difference in meaning as well as a shift in construction. Hence, in their efforts to put a spin on their article for which information was provided, they should be careful not to misconstrue what was said or deliberately twist information for their own aims.
Yours faithfully,
Khurshid Sattaur
Commissioner-General
