‘Hundreds of millions of tax dollars’ owed to government

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“We’re not targeting businesses,” Mr Wilson told reporters yesterday. “We’re just going through a compliance strategy to ensure that we encourage businesses to be compliant. If you’re non-compliant, there are consequences of non-compliance.”

“The one thing we want from businesses is transparency in operations. I think they’ve started that process of being a little more transparent.”

Mr Wilson has said officials are planning several more operations throughout The Bahamas to recover outstanding taxes and will go after businesses that make false declarations.

“We have 50,000 businesses registered, alright, and about 40,000 of those businesses report turnover of less than $100,000 so they pay zero, so that’s all we know,” Mr Wilson said.

“That’s our universe and we work through that universe to determine instances of non-compliance. People don’t put a flag and say they’re noncompliant ya know. They try to be discreet in their non-compliance.”

Mr Wilson said about $800m in real property tax is owed.

“Most property taxes are owned by foreignowned properties because you know Bahamians have a wide level exemption, so this is probably driven mostly by non-Bahamianowned properties,” he said.

Asked yesterday about other potential penalties, Mr Wilson said he would like to see wage garnishments.

“Obviously with businesses, we tend to be more forthright with businesses in our discussions with them,” he added.

Last year, Mr Wilson revealed that the Revenue Enhancement Unit’s (REU) audits showed

FINANCIAL Secretary Simon Wilson said yesterday that ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ is owed in VAT and other tax arrears to the government, which does not even include the $800m owed in real property taxes.

50 per cent of registered companies were noncompliant with VAT laws.

“When you think of it from a statistical point of view, 50 per cent of persons audited were found to be non-compliant, which is a very, very high ratio,” he said.

“It is a cause for concern. When you think of that, one in every two businesses they’re going to for an audit have not filed or are charging VAT but not remitting the money to government, which shows a high level of non-compliance for that small sample size.

“If that cascades to the full population of VAT registrants, it shows the significance of the problem of non-compliance.”