Describing the report's finding that Bahamian companies faced a tax burden equivalent to 48 per cent of their annual profits as "high", Zhivargo Laing said that while the Government had made some headway in making the conduct of business in the Bahamas easier, it had "lots more progress to make".
Expressing optimism that the Bahamas would soon improve on its Paying Taxes 2012 ranking of 54th out of 183 nations, when it came to ease of payment, Mr Laing said that improvement in this area was also "good for the Public Treasury".
Making it easier to pay taxes made it more likely people would pay the due amounts, and the minister added: "We're having a fairly good response from people using the e-government service, and are not sure that ranking reflects that as yet.
"The reality is that we have a few hundred non-Bahamians registered to pay [real property tax], and several hundred Bahamians registered to pay online also. The last I saw, the number of persons registered to use the service was about 800. Quite a number of them were non-Bahamians using the services to pay real property tax."
Currently, the Government's e-government portal is configured for real property tax payments, the payment of fixed penalty notices, driver's licence renewals and inquiries that suppliers/vendors can make of the Government.
"I think we've sought to do any number of things," Mr Laing said when it came to making the payment of taxes in the Bahamas easier. He pointed to simplifying the calculation of Business Licence taxes, basing this now solely on gross revenues, as one such example, saying this aided both the private sector and the Government.
"We have Treasury offices in various islands, more so than in times past," the minister told Tribune Business. "We have them in Exuma, Abaco and Grand Bahama also. All of those offices make it easier for people to pay taxes."
And he added: "The reality is that we are seeking to reform the process of doing business in the Bahamas. We have made some progress, and have lots more progress to be made.
"Making it easier for both Bahamian and international businesses to operate in the Bahamas can only be good for the economic growth and development of the Bahamas. We are making earnest efforts in that direction, and have some ways to go, but are on the right track.
"If that is reflected, the 50th or 55th place ranking we are in now will be lowered, as we move to make ourselves more competitive with those in the upper echelons of these listings."
Mr Laing added his voice to those calling on the Paying Taxes 2012 authors, the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) accounting firm, together with the World Bank and the latter's International Finance Corporation (IFC) arm, to break out how they calculated the '48 per cent of profits' tax burden facing Bahamian companies, saying the figure seemed high.
"That's very interesting for a company that has no capital gains tax, no corporate income tax," Mr Laing told Tribune Business. "I don't know how you make that calculation in the absence of company profit information. It seems high to me, but I don't have the benefit of the information they used for their calculations.
"Considering what we know about companies and the level of taxes they pay in this country, we charge a maximum of 1 per cent on gross revenues of companies, and many pay 0.5 per cent on the Business Licence side.
"There are any number of financial institutions, when you look at the comparable rate of taxation on them compared to other countries in the world, we think we are relatively low."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Neil Hartnell
Quelle/Source: The Bahamas Tribune, 16.12.2011
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