Commissioner-General says consumer bodies need to be more responsible: August 14, 2007
Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr. Khurshid Sattaur is calling on the various consumer bodies to exercise more responsibility to their membership and the nation as a whole. 

Mr. Sattaur was responding to recent comments by consumer bodies that Value Added Tax (VAT) is responsible for the increase in prices of a number of commodities.

“The whole issue boils down to the monitoring of VAT by the consumers themselves and the consumer bodies who have a responsibility to their membership. I am referring to well-known consumer advocates who are decrying the implementation of VAT and blaming the ills on the GRA for not doing enough,” the GRA Head pointed out.

The Commissioner-General emphasized that while the responsibility of the GRA is to administer taxes it has done extensive education programmes targeting both consumers and businesses and instead queried what the consumer bodies are doing to better-inform and educate their consumers about the issues.

“To begin with, when you hear some of the things that they (consumer bodies) have been saying….it tells you how misinformed they are. They don’t seem to have a clear understanding of the VAT at all and yet they want to champion their consumers on an issue that is a National issue,” he noted.

Mr. Sattaur reiterated that VAT was designed to reform six other taxes (consumption, telephone, purchase, hotel accommodation, service and entertainment) administered by the GRA and has the promise of ensuring that all other taxes are liberalized in the way they function.

“That is one of the good things about VAT because when that happens the taxes will be more efficient for us to administer. People tend to lose sight of that major characteristic of VAT. That is why it was put in place.”

The Commissioner General added that the taxes replaced had become archaic and inefficient and that VAT is expected to modernize the tax system.

Mr. Sattaur noted, however, that in order for all objectives to be realized, there has to be an equal level of responsibility on the part of both consumers and businesses.

“From the inception, we found that businesses were somewhat reluctant to have the VAT implemented. On closer scrutiny what we discovered was that that reluctance stemmed from the lack of accountability that they all had in their businesses and we recognize that that may have been the reason,” the GRA Head recalled.

He added that the VAT system relies significantly on businesses having proper accounting systems in place which would allow the GRA to have far more information on what is being carried on in those businesses than was previously the case.

On this note, the GRA Head commended those businesses which have, as a result of VAT, incurred additional costs and have taken the time to improve their accounting systems.

 Mr. Sattaur noted that consumers have not been exercising their rights effectively and ensuring that businesses are accountable. This, he added could be done by them demanding receipts when they make purchases.

He stressed that when consumers fail to obtain a receipt they allow some businesses to still continue with the practice of evading taxes along with charging them higher prices for basic commodities.      

He acknowledged that the GRA is aware of the high prices being charged on some commodities but pointed out that in many of these cases, it is because the commodities are being imported at higher purchase prices compared to the prices they were imported at before the implementation of VAT.

The Commissioner-General concluded that higher purchase prices are due to a number of reasons including scarcity of the commodities on the World Market.