The Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority has raised their grave concern over taxpayers who are not submitting their proper tax documents.
FRCA’s chief executive officer Jitoko Tikolevu today revealed that more than 5 million dollars remains unaccounted for just because of this oversight by taxpayers.
“There is so much been done by Government in the environment that we operate in today to facilitate trade and business to grow and make profit. Its a partnership that we want from tax payers to respect the laws of this land as far as taxation is concerned,” said Tikolevu.
The Fiji Revenue Customs Authority is warning tax payers who are providing wrong information with clear intention of defrauding government.
This comes after they continuously receive illegal documentations from tax payers.
“Double claiming of invoices. We also have issues with zero rating of sales. whole range of products that are zero rated particular the essential food items. Everyday tax payers come across this. We go to businesses tax payers will get an offer if they do not want an invoice than the price will be lesser. So basically they are still being charged the same prizes but the customers believe that the lesser price is coming because they are not paying VAT,” said FRCA’s general-manager for taxation Visvanath Das.
Income Tax is one of the discrepancies FRCA has found.
Das added that despite governments policy on FNPF deductibility for businesses reduced to 50%, FRCA has found businesses claiming 100% on these deductions as expenses.
“They provide a set of books for taxation and a set of books for banks. It is nigh time we want to highlight these are all the issues and FRCA knows about it. We want full compliance. If people don’t comply with us we will invoke heavy penalties. we have penalties up to 75% as well as fines and imprisonment,” Das said.
From the four cases FRCA have investigated, discrepancies have totaled to 5 million dollars.
“There are some construction companies and one case of a small grocery shop but the supermarkets are in process and we are expecting a huge discrepancy in that area,” said Das.
FRCA claims that auditing firms and accountants have also turned a blind eye.
“They submit audited accounts. So even after auditing if they are not picking it up we will have to say blatantly that it is a collusion or aiding and abetting the tax payers,” Das added.