Shocking statistics have been released by the Fiji Revenue and Customs Service as a number of businesses, companies, trusts, estates, and partnerships have not been filing their tax returns to Revenue and Customs.
Chief Executive Officer Visvanath Das says while 341,251 wage and salary earners in the country are paying their income taxes as required because their taxes are deducted at source by the employers, many companies and businesses are not doing the same.
He says this is really unfair as the salary earners are paying their tax dues.
Das has revealed that there are 43,196 active businesses in Fiji however only 22,303 of these businesses are filing tax returns.
This means that only 52% of the businesses in the country are filing tax returns.
There are 10,386 active companies in the country and only 5,648 or 54% of the companies are filing tax returns.
For Trusts and Estates, there are 5,313 of them in the country however only 800 are filing returns.
This is only 15% of the total active Trusts and Estates in Fiji.
The same goes for partnerships - where there are 4,009 active partnerships and only 600 are filing tax returns.
This is 15% of the total active partnerships in Fiji.
Das hopes all these taxpayers will comply as they would prefer voluntary compliance.
He says if this is not done, then these taxpayers will face up to 300% in penalties.
Revenue and Customs has also revealed that only 3% of the total revenue collected by Revenue and Customs in the 2016/2017 financial year was from all the supermarkets in Fiji.
Das says the tax collected from the supermarkets was $43.65 million out of the total revenue collected by Revenue and Customs which amounted to $1.5 billion.
He says this cannot be the true and actual tax to be paid by the supermarkets as everyone in the country buys goods from the supermarkets and a 3% tax income is clearly understated.
However, this is now being addressed with audits underway.
The first supermarket chain has been handed a tax bill of $53 million and they have made arrangements to pay their dues in installments.
Audits continue for three other supermarket chains.
There are 794 supermarkets in the country and the VAT Monitoring System will be installed in all supermarkets from 1st January 2018.
Audits are also underway in the construction industry. Despite the construction boom after Cyclone Winston, only $114 million in taxes came from the construction industry which is 7% of the total amount of taxes received by Revenue and Customs.
There are 985 registered construction companies in the country.
It has been revealed that a random check saw a company that secured a 1 million dollar contract for the Cyclone Winston rehabilitation work was declaring its income for the year as $250,000.
The company under-declared it’s income by $750,000 to avoid taxes.
Das says the companies have to comply or face the consequences.
More information will be revealed after the audit.
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