MONTEGO BAY, St James — President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI) businessman Jason Russell is warning tax dodgers that falsifying their accounts may yield short-term gains, but in the long run creates reputational and other damage to their businesses.

“I have found that this idea of doing business the black market way, the hustle way, it does not pay as much dividends as people think. Not paying your taxes, not doing proper accounting because you’re hiding, sometimes you hide money and you don’t know where you put it. People are stealing from me [and] I have no idea,” the MBCCI president pointed out.

He was addressing final-year business students at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) 2025/2026 Western Campus Seminar at Sea Gardens Beach Resort last week.

He cautioned that the Government has created a system where accurate, matched records are only possible if everything is fully declared, otherwise inconsistencies will appear.

“I’ve gone into businesses that I have mentored and they have three different books and are trying to educate me why they have three different books and why it makes sense. And when I look through the books, they can’t account for some of the money, whether it’s hypothetical, never carry a zero over or something, they don’t know, it cannot be reconciled. And it’s designed to not be reconciled. The Government has made a system so bulletproof, in a sense, that in order to have truly reconcilable books, you have to declare everything or you have gaps,” he argued.

Russell, who comes from a family-owned enterprise that operates Pier One Restaurant and Deja Hotel, emphasised that their businesses consistently meet their tax obligations.

“At Pier One, at the hotel, we pride ourselves in paying all the taxes, being 100 per cent straight. I can walk into any bank, and this is where people get it so wrong, they hide the money and hide the business, and they’re ready to find it and show it to the bank, the bank is like, so what happened to the last 10 years of your business? You just open? You tell me you’re doing 10 years of business but you don’t have a proper bank account. You say you make a million dollars a month but when I look in the bank you only make $10,000 a month. Weh the money deh? I see you driving a [Mercedes] Benz, and I see a big house on the hill, but not on this piece of paper here that you giving me,” he said.

“What they do in the short-term affects their growth in the long term. If you are going into a business, and I don’t knock anybody’s business, obviously there are many ways of skinning the cat. And a man will stand up beside us and tell us something completely different,” he added.

Speaking on the topic, ‘Building the future of Jamaican entertainment: Innovation, networking & youth opportunity’, Russell, who was responding to a question from the floor, advised the students that in pursuit of their careers “it suits you to go and work for a business that has longevity, has the ability to grow and grow well”.

“A business with ‘runnings’ being its backbone is limited in the scope of where it can go and who we can do business with. [They] can’t get on NCC [National Contracts Commission], can barely get a TCC [tax compliance certificate], can’t do much business, can’t go global, can’t go to your bank. You are stuck in a dead-end job as far as I’m concerned, with a dead end business leader. The only way to grow your business is to grow it straight,” he suggested.

Another tip he offered the students who intend to pursue business careers upon graduation is to set money aside for the proverbial rainy day to avoid awaiting insurance payout to restart after a disaster, as the process of settling claims are at times lengthy.

“We as business owners have to put a little cash ‘under our mattresses’. We put a little in the back in the event of when something bad happens because we cannot sit and wait on insurance to come in. Insurance will not open your business tomorrow. There’s a long process a lot of times,” he explained.

“My hotel got damaged, and basically I’m getting nothing from insurance. But luckily we had some in the back to start work and keep the business going,” he added.

The seminar was held under the theme, ‘Bridging minds, building futures: Igniting innovation through collaboration’.