Dear Editor,

In your newspaper reports, you have Commissioner General Sattaur saying that businesses should not charge the 16% VAT on the old prices that include the Consumption Tax. He says that businesses will be compensated for the losses from selling old stock at reduced prices.

However, the GRA hotline has informed me that the stock relief is being offered only to importers. That means that regular retailers who bought stock in 2006 are caught in a quandary. If they reduce their prices, they will have to absorb the losses themselves.

Businesses charging VAT on top of their old prices is not the result of greed, but is because those businesses have no idea how to recover their losses if they reduce prices. If the commissioner and his staff can offer detailed information on how all registered businesses can recover the loss from removing the C-tax from their old prices, it would greatly improve the implementation of VAT.

Yours faithfully,

(name and address

supplied)