Online platform in the works
Tue, 06/14/2016 - 12:00am
Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Christopher Sinckler says that an online platform is being created to allow persons to make payments to the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA).
Speaking to the media yesterday morning, he explained that one of the critical aspects of the tax system reform was to take the system fully electronic, which would require a common information technology system across all the tax functions – including income tax, value added tax and land tax. He said these efforts are advancing, adding that a mission team from the Latin American Development Bank commonly known as CAF, are on island this week to look at the project, as the Bank is providing grant and loan financing for the purchase of such a system.
“We are hoping to have all of that in place before the end of the year,” he revealed.
Meanwhile, asked about whether the BRA would be allowing more of their offices to accept credit card payments, the Minister said while thought is being given to this, Government is also cognisant of the multimillion dollar fees it has to bear by allowing such transactions to take place.
“We’ve been trying to working with the banks to see how we can accommodate that without that being such a financial burden. It is ok if you do it for one transaction here and one transaction there, but you are talking about thousands of transactions, each having a fee attached to it. Therefore it becomes millions of dollars, in fact, only this year I was forced to take a supplementary to Parliament, the total of the supplementary was $17 million, but a significant part of that was to pay for the fees associated with credit card transactions… for the payment of taxes to Government and that was over and above what we had provisioned in the Estimates,” he indicated.
With that in mind, he said if the BRA is going to allow more credit card transactions, it will have to work with the financial institutions to find a way to do so, without putting additional pressure on the public purse.
Meanwhile, questioned about the delays being experienced at the Barbados Licensing Authority (BLA) in respect of the renewal of drivers’ licences due to the printing machines breaking down, Sinckler explained that the matter does not fall under his purview, but the Ministry of Transport and Works. His comments came as he explained that the BRA’s role as it relates to the Barbados Licensing Authority is only to collect money.
“People have been, I think, incorrectly blaming the Barbados Revenue Authority for some of those challenges. If you say we do not have enough cashiers and there is a back up at the cashier point, that is the BRA problem and that would have to be addressed. But we aren’t passing the buck in that particular regard because it’s all one government, therefore they should all function properly,” he said.
With that in mind, Sinckler said he understands that provision has been made in the 2016-2017 Estimates for the procurement of new machines for the BLA. (JRT)