Five working days to complete VAT registration - businesses reminded
Stabroek News
December 24, 2006
The Guyana Revenue Autho-rity (GRA) is urging businesses to make full use of the five remaining working days in the year to make and respond to queries about Value Added Tax (VAT) and Excise Tax.
Acting Commissioner of the VAT and Excise Tax Department Hema Khan said in a release issued yesterday that this was to complete their VAT registration before the stipulated December 31 deadline.
Khan said the VAT Department had some queries for a few persons but several of them had not responded to the queries resulting in a delay in the completion of their registration process.
The release noted that it was important that those persons make contact with the VAT Department to complete the registration process and to ensure timely receipt of their VAT certificates.
The department is encouraging other business persons who have queries about the registration process to contact the VAT Department as early as possible.
Assistant Commissioner of Operations Bridget Abraham explained that while the law gives the Commissioner-General ten days to register an applicant, the VAT Department is working diligently to issue certificates within two days of receipt of the application.
Registration for VAT began on October 1 this year and the deadline for persons who will be eligible to charge and collect the tax from January 1, 2007 is this month-end.
So far more than 1,600 businesses have registered and the GRA will publish a list of the registrants shortly. The government had set a target for 2,500 businesses to be registered before the deadline.
The GRA is currently analyzing the tax roll to determine persons or businesses that should be registered, the press release said. There are civil and criminal penalties which may apply for failing to register.
The civil penalty is equivalent to double the amount of output tax payable from the time the persons are required to apply for registration until the person files that application; while the criminal penalty is $25,000 and two years imprisonment.