BRA says tax relief available for some

The Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA) is throwing a lifeline to persons struggling to pay their taxes.

This was disclosed today by BRA’s Revenue Commissioner, Louisa Lewis-Ward who said the olive branch was being extended in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said with thousands of Barbadians facing economic challenges due to the pandemic, BRA was open to waiving penalties for those who could not afford to pay.

However, she explained that the tax itself could not be waived in most instances.

“We’re looking at land taxes and at personal taxes where taxpayers are experiencing difficulties. We’ve looked at the waiver of penalties and interests on the VAT as well. For the land tax if you have arrears of land tax we are looking at providing waivers of back penalties and interest which may have compounded the obligation that you have to pay,” Lewis-Ward pointed out during a bi-annual Zoom press conference this afternoon.

“So really in each of the taxes if people are undergoing undue hardship or unable to settle the obligation we do recommend that you come forward. We have a full debt management team. We perhaps cannot waive the tax itself but we can assist with waivers of penalties and interests. We have a Tax Relief Board which matters go to upon application and that board will consider on an individual basis each case and determine whether a waiver of the tax itself is necessary and make recommendations to the Ministry of Finance.”

Lewis-Ward also spoke to the recent developments where persons were being made to wait for long periods to make payments at BRA offices.

She said while it was most evident at the BRA’s location at the Licensing Authority in the Pine, it was also prevalent at some of its other locations.

Lewis-Ward said BRA issued receipts for over 40 licensing transactions, amounting to over 70, 000 receipts per year.

While she apologized for the lengthy delays, she said BRA was moving to automate some of those payments to prevent the need for visits to its offices.

She said additional staff had also been hired to minimize waiting times.

“This of course amounts to a heavy flow of traffic at all locations and indeed taxpayer traffic. To protect the health of taxpayers we have in recent times moved to remove in-person transactions by facilitating registration services via email interaction at this stage while we work towards having the process automated as an e-service.

“We’ve seen the long lines at the location at the Pine in particular, but similar lines exist at our other locations as well and we put additional staff on the process of vehicle licensing and on other processes as well to try to mediate and try to bring a close to any kind of backlog that we have in terms of the number of applications that need to be processed,” Lewis-Ward said.

The Revenue Commissioner revealed that BRA would not be issuing any more vehicle stickers.

She said the numbers were simply too high and BRA would now be issuing a QR code instead.

“We are actually looking to try with the Licensing Authority to automate the process so instead of a sticker you will receive something that is like a QR code. We are going to dialogue with the insurance companies to see if we can get that to happen as a matter of urgency.

“It simply is too many stickers to process. At one point we had over 40, 000 stickers as a backlog to process and that number only continues to compound as time goes on…so we’re going to look to automate the process,” Lewis-Ward said. (RB)