An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Two cham­bers are wel­com­ing the move by the Min­istry of Fi­nance to pay the out­stand­ing VAT ar­rears, but they are call­ing for a long-term so­lu­tion.

In a news re­lease on Mon­day, the min­istry said on­ly ap­pli­cants owed re­funds over TT$250,000.00 would be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive VAT Bonds. Re­funds of TT$250,000.00 or less will be paid in cash.

It said the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) ad­vised that the VAT Bonds would be is­sued on a first-come, first-served ba­sis with an ef­fec­tive date of Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, and a tenor of three years.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the sys­tem must be re­struc­tured to en­sure that busi­ness­es don't face these chal­lenges again as it cre­ates un­nec­es­sary strain on busi­ness­men and the econ­o­my.

Ma­haraj urged au­thor­i­ties to keep the ap­pli­ca­tion process for VAT Bonds sim­ple, and ac­ces­si­ble and main­tain the nec­es­sary sup­port so that when there are any bot­tle­necks, busi­ness­men could call, let's say a hot­line for ex­am­ple, to make sure that if there's some­thing that is not do­ing cor­rect­ly that they could re­ceive the nec­es­sary guid­ance.

“We be­lieve that the Min­istry of Fi­nance should work to­wards long-term so­lu­tions to pre­vent this is­sue from re­cur­ring so that busi­ness­es do not face fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ty. What un­cer­tain­ty brings though, is that busi­ness­men have re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures every month and they are al­so one-off ex­pen­di­tures. If we could pre­dict when VAT re­funds will be paid, it would be a lot eas­i­er for us to man­age our busi­ness. Some busi­ness­men say to us that they wait for our cheque in the mail every day,” Ma­haraj added.

While the ini­tia­tive is a pos­i­tive step, Ma­haraj said the gov­ern­ment must ad­dress the root cause of these ar­rears.

“I mean we can't say this enough though but re­funds rarely rep­re­sent tax­es al­ready col­lect­ed by the busi­ness­men and paid over to the gov­ern­ment and these de­lays should not be the norm,” he lament­ed.

Ki­ran Singh, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, said the cham­ber knows there were sev­er­al de­lays in the is­suance of VAT re­funds over the last two quar­ters lead­ing up to the end of 2024 and trusts that the bu­reau­crat­ic process will be more ef­fi­cient in this in­stance to en­sure that the re­funds are paid.

Singh said the cham­ber ex­pects that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would en­sure that these pay­ments are dis­trib­uted in a time­ly man­ner, as these re­funds have been long over­due, and busi­ness­es are anx­ious­ly await­ing the is­suance of these V re­funds.

“The an­nounce­ment that the Min­is­ter will be giv­ing VAT bonds or bonds for VAT re­funds of over $250,000 for the larg­er busi­ness­es with an at­trac­tive 4 per cent in­ter­est rate, we ex­pect that busi­ness­es will pick up on that of­fer in the com­ing days and weeks and en­sure that they sat­is­fy all the tax cri­te­ria that are out­lined,” Singh out­lined.