Fiji Revenue and Customs Service investigate some major supermarkets for tax evasion

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service is investigating some major supermarkets for tax evasion.

For some of these supermarkets, the total amount involved in tax evasion is expected to reach millions of dollars.

A major supermarket chain has already received a tax demand notice of 53 million dollars following an audit by Revenue and Customs Service which showed millions of dollars in tax evasion.

Revenue and Customs CEO Visvanath Das says there are due collection processes and the company is arranging payment within timelines given or they will face prosecution.

Revenue and Customs has confirmed that they have established that some of these supermarkets were not connecting all their cash registers to their server.

It has been established that money received from those cash registers not connected to the server were going to the company director.

No tax was paid on the items going through these cash registers and it was not captured in the sales revenue for accurate declaration of income.

There are also cases of under-declaration of income and the setting up of companies overseas and then over-valuing goods when they are sold to the company based in Fiji.

When asked on how many major cases of tax evasion by businesses are being looked at and what is the total amount involved, Das says there are many profiled and many reported through whistleblowers but 10 companies are currently under investigation.

The total dollar value will only be established once Revenue and Customs complete the investigations.