Viralee Latibeaudiere of the Inland Revenue Department. - File

Viralee Latibeaud-iere, acting Commissioner of the Inland Revenue Department, says Tropical Storm Gustav will likely push her department's collections off target, but only marginally.

Prior to the storm, the department was ahead on collections.

Forensic database

Now Latibeaudiere has vowed to kick up her own storm, saying the department, come November 1, would be going aggressively after tax evaders, assisted by a forensic database now being built.

Inland taxes at the end of August reached $69 billion; the amnesty programme brought in $12 billion of the total.

"Up to July 2008, we were running 101.2 per cent of our target. With the hurricane, (storm) it has distorted our figures," she said in a luncheon address to the Lion's Club of Kingston at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.

"Soon we will be able to say but I think that we will be 97/98 per cent still on our running target."

Put another way, collections were 1.2 per cent above expectations before Gustav hit, but now Latibeaudiere is projecting that her department will miss its target by two or three per cent.

Inland Revenue at the top of the fiscal year, had projected collections from its 30 centres islandwide of $176.7 billion net, or about 70 per cent of total tax revenue.

Exceeded expectations

Collections to August had reached $69 billion.

Back on the amnesty programme, the success of which exceeded expectations, Lati-beaudiere said after the amnesty ends in October, her department would be embarking on an aggressive tax compliance drive.

"We are, therefore, encouraging taxpayers to take advantage of the amnesty because come the first of November, we will move into an enforcement mode and by enforcement this is what we mean. The law allows us to recoup taxes dueand owing to us through various avenues," she warned.

She said many tax evaders continue to play the 'catch me if you can' game, and that Inland Revenue was willing to play.

All stops

"When we catch you, that will be it. We will be pulling out all stops to find you," she said.

Part of that includes the building of a forensic database now underway, that will allow the tax authorities to tap into various government databases, including the Customs Department, Stamp Office and others to track tax evaders.

"When we find you, we will deliver the information to the Tax Payer Audit and Assessment Department, our sister department where under the Income Tax Act they can assess you by what is known as the best judgement assessment," she said.

"Once that is done, the onus is on the tax payer to prove that that assessment is correct.

So I encourage you, I implore you, let us not go there because we know that we have some vigilant tax auditors and when they come, they won't leave your place of business until they find something."

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com