Mottley says problem-plagued TAMIS to be reviewed

Government is seriously considering abandoning the TAMIS software after a three-year run that has been fraught with problems.

Word of this has come from Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who today complained that the Tax Administration Management Information System [TAMIS], which is being used by the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA), has been plagued with issues from inception and still continued to be problematic.

Speaking during debate on the 2021/2022 Estimates today, Mottley said $2.1 million had been set aside for BRA for the maintenance of TAMIS.

The online tax system was introduced by the former Democratic Labour Party administration and was officially rolled out on June 1, 2018, less than a month after the Barbados Labour Party was elected into office.

While TAMIS was intended to make it easier for persons and businesses to file and pay their various taxes, it has constantly had issues.

Mottley said a decision would soon be made on whether Government would stick with TAMIS or source another software.

“This country has been the victim of the most set of unfortunate circumstances for the procurement of software in too many instances of Government departments and software that when we check it, we either negotiated poorly because they are asking us to be able to pay large sums of money for basic changes when we should not be paying, and I am referring to what happened at the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) with the software that we have inherited there and I’m referring to what happened equally at the BRA,” Mottley pointed out.

“I have asked for a meeting with them along with the Attorney General because it cannot be that we as a nation continue to pay people to develop programmes, and in the case of this TAMIS what bothered me is that we are unsure of what their previous experience was and now we are having problems all of the time in getting the systems working well, starting from when we first came into office.

“The first thing they told the Attorney General and myself is that they would have to postpone the start of TAMIS, largely because of the confusion and that was June 2018, and it has been nothing but headache, from headache, headache, headache, headache, with respect to that programme.

“The Government will have to make a determination as to whether we want to continue if we can’t renegotiate on proper terms, whether we will remain with a noose around our necks or whether we will get rid of that noose and try to start again with something that makes sense for our circumstances,” the Prime Minister said.

(randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)