(Still been Enforced)

Date:  Wednesday | July 20, 2011  The Gleaner
Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) yesterday announced a raft of measures under a three-year plan it will be implementing to ensure that persons become tax compliant.
“Over the next three years, TAJ will be employing several strategies to boost compliance,” Meris Haughton, director of communications at Tax Administration Jamaica, said.
The priority will be to focus on professionals such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, tertiary-level academia personnel such as lecturers and tutors, as well as company directors, through which a compulsory filing programme will be introduced come 2012.
Other professionals and PAYE employees will be required to do the same in 2013 and 2014.
“There will also be a major push for employers, including government, to file their obligations online to further enhance the database warehouse used for data-mining activities,” said Haughton in a release.

Revised system
Among the other strategies outlined is the development of a revised risk-management system to identify and prioritise entities for audit, collection enforcement action and taxpayer education.
The tax authority will also be developing a debt-management framework, which will include a debt write-off policy while reviewing the legislation to support the compliance efforts.
Tax compliance is a now a major thrust for the government as it tries to bring in revenues without the implementation of new tax measures.
“Tax-compliance levels continue to be unacceptably low and we need to aggressively develop a culture of compliance,” implored Audley Shaw, minister of finance and the public service, while speaking at a Jamaica Chamber of Commerce function at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel yesterday.
Additional initiatives under the three-year tax-compliance project are the introduction of a revenue enhancement and arrears project, the establishment of a tax cheat hotline and an aggressive taxpayer-registration programme.

Source: JamaicaTax.gov.jm

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