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What's the difference between a taxman and a taxidermist?
Style Observer
Tony Gambrill
Sunday, November 08, 2009
The newspapers have been full of talk about where our taxes are going and where they are - or are not - coming from.
Of course, most of our taxes are going to pay off the national debt run up by politicians over the past 30 years. What is left has been going to such essentials as sprucing up Minister Bartlett's office and paving over his constituency (utilising the Tourism Enhancement Fund for reasons known only to him). But there's no need to be churlish about refurbishing the minister's office. Now that it is livable we can expect him to spend more time behind his desk in his $77,000-chair. Anyway, rumour has it that he'll shortly be announcing that taxpayers will be welcome to tour his office at no charge to see for themselves where their money went. This revelation has been followed by a contretemps about where the extra motor vehicle fuel tax has been going. Let's hope that the minister of transport isn't refurbishing his office or paving over his constituency in Clarendon.
All joking aside (who's joking?), it gets harder every day to figure out where our tax dollars are going, particularly if you drive a car over the minister's unfixed roads. What has become a more high-profile issue, however, is determining who isn't paying enough tax and who isn't paying any at all.
The prime minister said he checked the tax rolls and found that only a few of Jamaica's medical professionals were taxpayers. That makes facing your doctor on your next visit very awkward - should he/she charge you less because he/she isn't paying tax or charge you more because he/she is? I once asked my electrician why he wasn't charging me GCT for his services. His reply was that it would only cost me more. He did have a point.
Mr Golding confessed that just 4,000 people were having income tax deducted at the workplace (PAYE) but that another quarter-million should be paying up. The Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions conducted a survey which revealed that of 407,000 self-employed only 25,625 filed returns in 2001. God only knows what the current situation is. Registered companies are just as bad. One per cent of registered companies paid 75 per cent of corporate taxes; 80 per cent of company tax and 50 per cent of property tax is not being collected. Add to that only 5 per cent of the value of imports is being raked in and you can see why we are short of revenue.
The elegantly titled Voluntary Compliance Programme has ended so tax dodgers, once identified, can now be assessed for the past six years (they'll be better off than me - I got a demand for tax supposedly owed for l996!). The Tax Administration Department assures us that they are on to the case. Already this year they have sent out 33,584 letters to non-filers in the expectation that the post office will get their mail to its destination before 2010.
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Mr Ainsley Powell, commissioner of the taxpayer audit and assessment department, says during 2009 he is targeting about 12,000 high-profile, self-employed tax delinquents including entertainers and sporting personalities, amongst others. That's a drop in the bucket but, as the saying goes, "one one coco..." etcetera. Viralee Latibeaudiere, directorgeneral of the Tax Administration Department, says she has lots of tools at her disposal to enforce tax compliance, including a forensic data-mining intelligence unit, a high-intensity team and a special enforcement team that employs an old-fashioned bailiff to carry off your assets if you don't cough up.
Her department is thriving on members of the public fed up with friends and acquaintances (but not relatives?) enjoying the country's tax-funded services without paying tax so are snitching to the authorities. Damn right, I say. Not only have I been paying taxes in Jamaica for the best part of 50 years, but I have had my share of back-tax demands and tax audits. I even had a woman - who proved to be bogus - drive up to my house with a demand for an outstanding half-a-million dollars.
Mind you, I have to admit that my experiences with the young ladies sent to audit me and my little companies over the years have invariably been congenial. I can't say much for the "back office", though. Only recently, having received a letter stating that a particular audit had revealed that we had no additional tax obligation, in no time at all we got a demand for back tax for the period for which we'd just been cleared.
Oh, well, as Mark Twain once said, "The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."
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