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.
Harumph.
Wuh wrong with the GRA?? how they think we gonna get in contact with you guys for a cheap fee??
…….sandhurst ……….dictatorship………suppressers, oppressors………the information is coming because election is around the corner……..gra have to act to protect the party in power……..think about it……….over 500,000 to one million and rising guyanese living outside…. which government would not be scare of this influence……..the ppp is a full duplicate of the pnc…..the Guyanese people will soon take their country……we can now control any election in guyana from outside …….
Meh hear yuh got contact sandman, tell dem meh want fuh hear from meh broda on the cheap. LOL
These people in Guyana have no vision. what they gonna do?Shut down internet cafes?
The call termination,which is calls going into Guyana,GRA has no business in that. Eventhough these call termination services are very very poor,GRA needs to be hands off. Some of the biggest telecoms in America use some of these guys,but the quality of their calls are very poor.
GTT will probably have to drop their profit on incoming international calls,because the incentive will always be there. I know for a fact if I decided to do call termination In Guyana there is no way GTT or GRA can catch me and shut me down. Is all lip service to harass internet cafe owners.
Good work Mr. Sattaur…”render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s”.
We need the tax dollars for development. Go get it.
Mr Sattaur and the GRA need to go after the conterfeit “Businessmen”
that is wheeling and dealing drugs in Guyana some them living just
like Mr Bill Gates and never did a day’s work in their life.
The internet operators are “POOR PEOPLE” trying to make ends
meet Mr Sattaur.
………from bare foot……..to push toe ……to gaters and suv and beating guyanese women like their children …………what a low down false life they claim tobe business men…….drug operaters don’t pay tax …..check the business behind the business sattaur………you no what i mean ………..you call them backtrack operaters……..guns/drugs dealers ……..go and get them…….do an audit on some of the high rise in the city………sattaur how so much drugs in guyana…….
Where in the world are the GRA officials living? Which member of the public,who pays $10 per minute for an ovrseas call,will assist them to prosecute those make it very cheap to communicate with their relatives overseas, as opposd to those ‘registered and official” bodies who exploited them daily with monopolistic charges and prices, and that includes the very GRA whic has imposed on the working people the albatross of the vicious and extortionate VAT!
What the govt needs to do is to have the two major telecomunications companies to come to an agreement,with them to offset the high cost that the local community have to pay for inferior service given by the one company that has the monopoly.
I have no problem with the GRA having it slice of the cake but please do not shut these service providers down let them implement some payment plan so payment can be collected.
agree, this will force the monopoly to reduce rates.
……gra!!…….you new this a long, long, long time……please stop…..now that it spread you don’t like who and who getting the money ………so yu now using yu office to arrest the system………to make the system work engage government and let government know that the guyanese people need to communicate with there families and the telephone services need tobe of a better quality in the country and the city…….take note of the parallel economy in guyana as guyana continue to go under……government don’t and the people have to do to servive…….
In the world of capitalism the game is called ‘whatever the market will bear’ not customer beware. This is a prime example of the shallow mentality of the GRA to expect that they are worthy of being informed wherever ‘cheap’ overseas telephone calls are made. Hate to sound cynical, but get real !! Who in their right mind would turn down cheap phone rates at a facility, wherever it may be, and pay higher rates for poor service at a so-called ‘legitimate’ facility. Hate to burst your bubble GRA but this is Guyana and ‘anything goes’ is the order of the day.
Some times the gov’t really act backwards — what ever– all I can say is the more strict the Gov’t the wiser the population– Technology is sweet there are many ways around this I hope one day people can call from their own homes for as cheap as possible or totally free using their computers then what will the gov’t do charge the entire country, forget about firewalls that doesn’t allow skype, vonage and a hundred more to name, just get a head set with a microphone and use yahoo, hotmail and many others for free in the comfort of your own home.
gtprincess…you are so right.
However they are not after people who have their home computers with
the necessary links. They are after the Internet Cafes.
I have been in them and have put through calls and as far as I am concerned I
have paid what I think is reasonable. The GRA should have their auditors
in the field reviewing income calculations and determining what VAT is
due on the various components of the income. But…. as is usual in Guyana,
threats are the order of the day.
Instead of issuing threats and trying to be noticed, the GRA should quietly do
their work and STOP ISSUING THREATS!
Yuh wud tink dat sumbody gat brains.
Head set with microphone and a web cam using Windows Media Encoder would allow your family to see you and hear you. You have to embed the source (IP+ 1 open port each – port 8080 ok) to 2 live streaming on a single html page. I can do it like this. It costs nothing to talk to each other and even see each other. However, the party in Guyana must be able to set up encoder at his end also. High speed internet a must if you want to see each other at a reasonable bit rate.
This is how I do it.
Red Lion
but how much are they loosing, very small percent.
let the small man survive and come to small amount of fees to be paid.
we need the competition.