GRA, TPL reach agreement on outstanding taxes

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article?id=56526879

GRA, TPL reach agreement on outstanding taxes
Stabroek News
Thursday, August 16th 2007

The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL)
have reached a settlement on outstanding amounts that the latter owed
in Consumption Taxes, this newspaper has learnt.

According to a source to which this newspaper spoke, the GRA and the
company are still working out the intricacies of the agreement reached.
The company will have more to say on the matter. The agreement comes
amid the disclosure by the GRA that files pertaining to the matter had
disappeared from Customs House and that an investigation of this matter
had been launched.

Commissioner General of the GRA Khurshid Sattaur told this newspaper
that the company and GRA have reached an "amicable" agreement to pay
sums that records demonstrate the company is liable for. He stated that
even though the company's files have not been recovered, the GRA has
its means of accessing related records.

This tax matter, which engaged the two parties for the past two years,
centres on whether or not TPL was required to pay Consumption Tax for
stone.

The GRA had in April accused the company of owing large amounts in
Consumption Taxes for stone. The company had refuted this and had
threatened to move to the High Court for an interpretation of the
relevant laws.

The Police had been called in to investigate the disappearance of a
number of files belonging to TPL, so far nothing has come of this
investigation.

The Commissioner General said in June that the GRA is still carrying
out its internal investigation to see where the files might be.

"We are not ruling out collusion. We're concerned about the intent or
possible intent of the disappearance since it could serve the
taxpayer," Sattaur had stated.

The company's lawyer Sanjeev Datadin had said that the company was
cooperating fully with the GRA on the interpretation of the laws
regarding the company's payment of taxes. He had declared that the
company would not have been cooperating further with the GRA unless it
was given a written assurance that documents and files would not be
misplaced.

Sattaur had told this newspaper that the GRA shares some of the blame
as well since the files' disappearance shows that the system controls
have been compromised. He stated that though human error was not being
ruled out, it seemed convenient that the files vanished during a
revenue matter.