John Myers Jr., Business Reporter

Tax consultant Ethlyn Norton-Coke - Peta-Gaye Clachar/Staff Photographer

Tax consultant and attorney-at-law Ethlyn Norton-Coke has warned that businesses, including company directors and senior executives, will be more closely tracked by the authorities in a move to bell tax evaders.

Norton-Coke said the Tax Administration and Assessment Department, using an integrated computerised system, will be zeroing in on business and other transactions that would attract tax but are not declared to the revenue agencies.

The department will also be matching lifestyle against declared returns.

"If a particular person registered and licensed a BMW X5 that costs over $10 million, but paid only $250,000 in income tax, a red flag would be raised," said Norton-Coke.

Tracking system

The new tracking system comes on stream in less than a year.

The finance ministry has targeted revenue collections of $263 billion in the current fiscal year, compared to collections of $218 billion in 2007-08.

There is, said Norton-Coke, an estimated $30 billion of taxes to be had from enforcing compliance and widening the tax net.

Already, contractors, company directors and senior executives, medical practitioners, accountants and attorneys-at-law have been placed on a list of professionals classified as 'high risk'.

As a result, the monies they spend and income earned will be placed under increased scrutiny.

"Directors' fees are liable to PAYE. Loans to directors, if not paid back within the year, will be treated as income," said Norton-Coke, who at the time was addressing an investors' forum in Kingston.

The tax expert, who advises the Government, also said that all senior executives who hold credit cards would be required to retain the transaction receipts for the tax authorities to verify business versus personal expenditure.

Receipts

If they fail to supply the credit-card receipts, the monies spent would either be charged back as emoluments or disallowed as an expense for the business, she warned.

The tax consultant also charged that the Treasury was being denied revenues due from the construction sector, saying large contracts were being subdivided into smaller packages in an attempt to avoid or reduce contractors' levy payments, which are calculated at two per cent of the gross value of a contract for construction, tillage and haulage operations.

"There is a gross discrepancy," said Norton-Coke. "When you look at the construction going on around and then when you look at the small amount of contractors' levy that has been collected, you know that something is going on," she said.

The renewed focus on tax evaders is meant "to widen the tax net and to reduce the reliance on the overburdened PAYE persons", said the tax expert, while targeting those whose tax returns reflect small or no profit despite their involvement in multimillion-dollar trade activities.

She explained that the methodology will be to extract and use information from tax audits already done.

"If you do a land transaction then they are going to trace the persons who bought it," Norton-Coke said.

The computerised network is expected to come on stream by next April.

john.myers@gleanerjm.com