Dear Editor,
The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) acknowledges the letter written by R. Thompson in the Stabroek News on Friday, June 19, 2009 captioned ‘Long waiting time to pay duties, administration charges at Customs accounts department in Main Street.’
While it is true that taxpayers are having their transactions processed at a less than satisfactory pace, this is not due to the capacity of the bandwidth or the printer.
Rather, this is due to the expansion of the GRA’s operations as a result of the integration of its various business processes and operations countrywide, and the linking of these to the Total Revenue Integrated Processing System (TRIPS) to afford taxpayers the benefit of conducting all their business at any GRA location.
The process of integrating and networking requires the testing of new information placed in the TRIPS environment and the training of personnel.
However, to reduce the inconvenience to taxpayers in the short term, a shift system has been introduced at some locations to ease the load on the system during the day. Further, measures are being put in place to ease the current load, and cater for any additional load in the near future.
TRIPS is functional throughout the departments of the GRA and is currently allowing taxpayers to register for taxes. Through a phased implementation, other modules such as the submission of declarations, electronic payments, access to public information and status queries on transactions submitted to the GRA have come on stream.
As the organization continues the process of integration and change to better serve the public, taxpayers are asked to exercise patience.
The Commissioner-General is sparing no efforts in ensuring that weaknesses found in the system are remedied expeditiously to avoid any unnecessary problem for taxpayers.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Fraser
Senior Manager
Public Relations
Guyana Revenue Authority
