'Dear tax cheats' Finance ministry writes to 10,000...
August 16, 2009
After firing warning shots earlier this year, the Ministry of Finance has dispatched approximately 10,000 letters to local professionals who, it believes, have not been paying their taxes.
The Sunday Gleaner understands that the 'professional' tax dodgers are again being invited to voluntarily come into the tax net, or face the full force of the law.
When contacted last week, officials at the finance ministry were not willing to comment on the latest campaign.
However, sources close to the tax operation confirmed that the letters had already been sent to entertainers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals who are robbing the country of millions of dollars.
But even as the Government goes after tax dodgers, at least one professional group has made it clear that it will not be implementing any measures to ensure that its members paid their taxes.
Dr Rosemarie Wright-Pascoe, president of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), said her association would not implement a suggestion to make tax compliance a mandatory requirement for membership.
She believes getting people to pay taxes is the Government's job, not the association's. "I think that would be encroaching on the responsibility of the Government," Dr Wright-Pascoe said.
In defence of her colleagues, Wright-Pascoe said of the 2,000-plus doctors on the island that more than 600 were employed by the Ministry of Health and were numbered among the nation's nearly 350,000 PAYE workers.
However, many of those doctors have private practices as well, and it is suspected that some are not making income-tax declarations on earnings from those practices.
'come clean'
The MAJ president encouraged her colleagues, who are either not paying or not handing over everything, to come clean. "It is an obligation that we have as citizens of this country to pay our taxes, and we encourage them to do so," she said....
Author: Tyrone Reid
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
