MONTEGO BAY, St James — Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) says it will be using its Revenue Administration Information System (RAiS) to find people who are not paying income tax, even though their income is over the threshold.

Describing the matter as a “worrying trend”, chief corporate communications officer for Tax Administration Jamaica Meris Haughton said the trend was noticed last week during an analysis of records on TAJ’s system.

“This is a fair warning… that we are gonna be giving. We have already started doing some analysis of some records we see on the system, and we are seeing some worrying trends. For example, we have seen where payrolls, SO2 (Employers’ Annual Return) is now filed online; we have now been able to analyse that a TRN [Tax Registration Number] is now coming up in more than one SO2s. Nothing [is] wrong with that, because you can have more than one employment. But, what we have been detecting is that you will have an individual employed to two, three, four-in one case we saw up to nine employments — or they were appearing on nine different SO2s, and that individual was enjoying the benefit of several thresholds,” disclosed Haughton.

“That means that persons are not paying their fair share because,they are getting more tax free than they ought to be getting. So through RAiS, we will be able to easily detect that and address it. So, these are some of the things that we are looking at, using the systems to improve compliance,” Haughton stressed.

Haughton was addressing the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry Parish Chamber Quarterly Luncheon Forum at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre in St James on Saturday.

— Anthony Lewis