Tax collection grows online
Published:Friday | September 17, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Avia Ustanny, Business Writer
It accounts for only a little over one per cent of all taxes paid in the country, but Jamaicans are increasingly transmitting their returns online and revenue officials say they anticipate substantial growth in the coming years.
"Now that the filing and payment of all major tax types is available online, we expect to see the collections grow even further and that the Virtual Collectorate becomes one of the highest collection stations," said Meris Haughton, the communications director of the government's Tax Administrative Services.
Online filing of returns and payments were instituted in Jamaica in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, when Jamaicans used that system to hand over $723.64 million to the treasury, or 0.28 per cent of the total collection of the $253.85 billion
By the following fiscal year, online payments reached $2.23 billion, or around three-quarters of one per cent of the $300.74 billion collected in 2009-2010..
For the first five months of the current fiscal year, payments through this system was $1.52 billion, or around 1.2 per cent of the $129.4 billion hauled in between last April and the first few days of September.
Cost-effective
The epayment portal is now the tax agency's 11th largest collection station, of 43, moving from 21st when the system was introduced three years ago.
"Eservices as a customer-service initiative provides taxpayers with options to make it easier, more cost-effective and more convenient for them to comply," said Haughton. "Business persons who file online have the added benefit of being able to electronically view their accounts."
Vaughn Thomas, IT consultant at the Tax Administration Directorate, said the the revenue department's epayment portal has moved from just over 3,100 transactions in its first year to more than 5,556 transactions in the first five months of this fiscal year.
'Eservices as a customer-service initiative provides taxpayers with options to make it easier, more cost effective and more convenient for them to comply.'