A large number of persons and entities have become illegally involved in the international telephone call business and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is moving to prosecute them.

In a press release, the GRA said investigations conducted by various divisions of the body have revealed that within recent times, a large number of individuals and entities have become involved in such operations and the effects of these operations are noted in the significant reduction in revenue collected from legitimate providers of international service.

“These individuals and businesses have essentially created illegal telecommunications networks that employ authorized VSAT equipment for unlawful purposes or VSAT equipment without the requisite licenses, SIM banks, broadband, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and international Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) providers like Vonage, Skype, and Packet 8 to offer outbound and inbound voice calls to the public for a fee. These operations are illegitimate and essentially result in tax evasion since no revenue is paid on these calls,” the GRA declared.

The release said that such operations are increasing rapidly and the GRA’s calculations indicate that their collective impact on the national revenue collection effort is too significant to ignore.  The GRA warned that all telephone calls from or received in Guyana, which do not utilise a properly licensed carrier, undermine the revenue collection by avoiding the payment of Value Added Tax (VAT) which all telephone calls attract and/or reducing the taxable income of legitimate telephone operators and therefore the amount of corporation tax collected by GRA.
The tax entity said that it intends to intensify its surveillance and investigative activities in collaboration with the competent relevant sector agencies to identify and prosecute defaulters to the full extent of the law. The release encouraged the public to report the existence of this type of operations to the GRA.