GRA establishing ‘Large Tax Payers Unit’ to recover debts

80% of all revenue earned by the state is paid by 200 large businesses. This is according to Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Godfrey Statia who also indicated that there are still outstanding sums from those businesses.

As such, he noted that the authority is in the process of establishing a ‘Large Tax Payers Unit’.

Speaking at a media conference last week, Statia said “the reasons why we are doing so, is that in each one of those files that we would have checked, there are hundreds of millions of dollars that if we are to review them correctly, we will be in a position to collect them. If we put our emphasis on the large tax payers and get them out of the way, we will then be in a position to put our efforts on the lower level taxpayers, and we would widen the tax base so that eventually, the tax rate could go down.”

The Large Tax Payers Unit will also include an Oil and Gas Unit to prepare for related businesses which are coming on-stream ahead of production in 2020.

“In two weeks time, we will have a list of trainers that will be coming down from the US Treasury and they will be carrying out the training session, specifically for the oil and gas section. We have the Carter group down here now, and they are carrying out all the training for the large taxpayers unit,” the Commissioner-General said.

The GRA Head said officers are also going after businesses not registered to pay VAT. He added that majority of those companies are owned by foreign nationals.