The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has collected in excess of $198 billion in tax revenue for the year 2018.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday at the GRA headquarters at Camp Street, Georgetown, Commissioner-General Godfrey Statia noted that the total sum collected was $198.7 billion, which is $27 billion more than the $171.1 billion collected in 2017. It was also higher than the $181.8 billion in collections that was projected in the 2018 national budget.
Statia explained that of the sum collected, at least $15 billion represented arrears, $7 billion of which was recovered through the amnesty programme which ran from January to September.
Documents seen by this Newspaper show that the total collections included $88.5 billion from Internal Revenue, $22.1 billion from Customs Duties, and $87.9 billion from Value-Added and Excise taxes.
While Statia did not identify the areas which have contributed to the increase in collection, the information made available shows that Value-Added Tax (VAT) revenue, which was $42.5 billion in 2017, increased to $48.1 billion based on an additional $3 billion+ in earnings from VAT on imported goods and $2 billion+ on domestic goods.
Similarly, Internal Revenue has increased from $76.2 billion to $88.5 billion, with collections from Withholding Tax increasing from $9.1 billion to 12.7 billion. Another notable increase included a $4 billion increase in Personal Income Tax collection from $21 billion in 2017 to $25 billion in 2018.
Statia also stressed that tax evasion continues to cost the authority significant sums. “That comes straight into the arrears base. For taxes which would be in arrears, including taxes in objection, that is $40 billion dollars,” he said.
According to Statia, evasion is also continuing to affect collections in VAT, Customs and Income Tax and it involves a lot of over invoicing, under invoicing and transfer pricing.
“Manufacturers who bring in goods not subject to consumption tax over-invoice, thereby increasing cost and reducing net profit; merchandisers, they under invoice. Over-invoicing or under-invoicing at the Customs level have implications for the VAT level and implications at Internal Revenue. For those persons who are over-invoicing, there are what you call related party transactions, so you have to go behind sister companies for related party transaction. These related parties trade among themselves, so they mark up all the time. It is across the board and is one of the rationales for the GRA so that if you are not caught at the Customs level you are caught at the VAT level or the Internal Revenue level which is what we call 360 taxation,” he explained.
