Shas­tri Boodan

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon has warned that the cur­rent tax col­lec­tion dri­ve by the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) might be putting tax­pay­ers at risk.

Ar­joon, who is al­so the vice pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), com­ment­ed on the is­sue while speak­ing at the busi­ness group’s In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tion at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas, on Sat­ur­day.

He said once pri­vate fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing tax in­for­ma­tion, goes pub­lic, it leads to in­di­vid­u­als be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals.

Ar­joon said the cur­rent dri­ve by the BIR to col­lect out­stand­ing tax­es is noth­ing new be­cause “they pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly do their au­dits every year and there are many in­stances where they will pull up on delin­quent tax­pay­ers, those who are found guilty of tax eva­sion and tax avoid­ance”.

He added, “How­ev­er, it does beg the ques­tion as to why this par­tic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing done at this par­tic­u­lar stage giv­en that quite a bit of time has elapsed, es­pe­cial­ly with these two busi­ness per­sons (re­fer­ring to An­tho­ny Chow Lin On and Derek Chin) and now they are be­ing called up­on to pay what­ev­er tax­es that may have missed in the past. 

“I think what’s even more cu­ri­ous—and in my view, it is a call for the BIR to be a bit cau­tious about—is that tax in­for­ma­tion is not sup­posed to be made pub­lic. It begs the ques­tion, how did tax in­for­ma­tion, re­gard­less of who it is, get leaked in­to the pub­lic do­main? This is a cause for con­cern.

“We live in a very crime-rid­dled so­ci­ety. We have to be very cau­tious, peo­ple’s tax in­for­ma­tion is part of their fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion.” 

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj not­ed that while the BIR was quick to tar­get tax evaders, the Gov­ern­ment was slow when it came to VAT re­funds.

“Our con­cern is the re­fund of VAT. There are penal­ties for busi­ness­men if we don’t pay our tax­es on time but there is a dis­pro­por­tion­ate be­hav­iour from the BIR be­cause we are charged mon­ey when we don’t file tax­es on time, or if there are out­stand­ing monies. On the oth­er side, when monies are be­ing owed to busi­ness­men there is no penal­ty be­ing paid by the gov­ern­ment,” he said.

Ma­haraj said busi­ness­es need to get their VAT re­funds on time to have cash flow and there is a back­log go­ing back sev­er­al years.