Despite numerous complaints by Jamaicans unable to complete the application process for the Government’s Reverse Income Tax Credit initiative on Thursday, Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) said thousands of citizens had successfully made their submission and the glitch was caused by a failure with the SMS verification component of the portal.

“We are up to maybe about 20,000 individuals already in terms of applications; significant numbers hour by hour are going through,” Meris Haughton, TAJ’s chief corporate communications officer, told the Jamaica Observer when contacted on Thursday at 2:00 pm. She emphasised that not all applicants were being set back.

Thursday night, TVJ reported Haughton as saying that at 5:00 pm TAJ had received 67,000 applications.

Haughton told the Observer that TAJ’s tech team had detected early in the process that there was an issue with the SMS function through which applicants would receive a verification code that would allow them to complete the application process.

“We have had dialogue with our service providers, they are working to resolve that, so what we are advising persons to do in the interim is to select the e-mail option, not the SMS option,” Haughton said Thursday.

She said individuals who only have access to ethernet are being asked “not to apply at this time or until we have advised”.

“The application period goes up to December 2, so the service providers are working assiduously to address that and we think it will be addressed by sometime later today and we will issue an updated service alert on that,” Haughton stated.

She said the SMS function will be switched back on once the issue is resolved.

On Thursday, several individuals took to the TAJ’s social media pages to complain about the difficulties being experienced. At the same time, others responding to those complaints shared that they had been able to complete the application process.

The hiccups were experienced mere hours after TAJ Commissioner General Ainsley Powell assured that the entity had made all the necessary linkages with financial industry players to ensure that payments under the initiative would be smooth.

The reverse tax credit payment of a one-off $20,000 for Jamaicans earning less than $3 million per annum was announced by Finance Minister Nigel Clarke when he opened the budget debate in March. Roughly 580,000 Jamaicans who contribute to the country through statutory deductions and through personal income tax will benefit from the measure which will cost the Government $11.4 billion.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative on Wednesday morning at Jamaica Pegasus hotel in St Andrew, Powell said TAJ prioritised the project when the announcement was made and was able to determine the scope of the policy.

He said the entity has made good on the lessons learnt from the experience under the COVID-19 Allocation of Resources to Employees (CARE) Programme which was launched in 2019 to provide cash and compassionate grants to Jamaicans earning beneath the income tax threshold at that time.

“We have engaged stakeholders in the financial services, remittance agencies and other institutions that will be handling the payment. We learnt from the CARE Programme that there were critical problems that have to be addressed in the whole process of paying out these funds in terms of how payments would be done,” Powell told guests at the launch.

“So we have reached a point where we have agreements and arrangements with most persons in the industry as to how the payments will be done and received; we developed a system that will allow online registration with an automatic validation process to determine persons’ eligibility,” the TAJ commissioner general said.

In emphasising that it is a “one-off programme” for which payments have to be made within this fiscal year, Powell said workers will be able to apply up to January 2, 2025.

“We will ensure that we complete the processing for payment before March 31,” he assured.

Noting that TAJ expects a failure rate of 10 per cent, based on data, Powell said “it means we need to assess as we go along to ensure that persons will be able to get through as easily as possible”.

“We have estimated that there are around 580,000 individuals who could be eligible for the tax credit and so we have geared ourselves to handle the volume,” he added.

Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke, in his remarks on Wednesday, said the measure was part of other efforts to alleviate inflationary pressures on Jamaicans, particularly those below the income tax threshold.

“To all the administrative clerks, store clerks, merchandisers, inventory clerks, security guards, those in quick-serve restaurants, waiters, bartenders, as long as you are filing your NIS (National Insurance Scheme) and your statutory deductions have been paid over, a one-time $20,000 grant is available for you digitally online; payment will be made to your bank or your remittance provider,” Clarke said.