PM Briceño on GST-free Shopping, “It’s a win”  

Get ready for another tax-free shopping spree this weekend, just in time for the Christmas holidays! The first GST-free weekend, held a few days ago, provided some valuable lessons for Belize Tax Services. Shoppers raised concerns about noncompliance, such as store owners backdating receipts or telling customers that credit card transactions didn’t qualify for the twelve-point-five percent discount. So, what does Prime Minister Briceño think about this tax holiday? Let’s find out!

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“I think that this GST-free weekend, I think has had some other unexpected, I’m trying to find the word, win, for the Belize Tax Department because it allowed them to see who are the ones that are, that it’s questionable, what it is that they are doing with their reporting of the GST.  I know some stores they closed down, they didn’t want to participate and you need to ask why.  Some of them came with all sorts of excuses, “Oh, it’s already in the price but yet they do not discount it in the invoices.  So what that has done is that it has alerted the BTS, they need to go and visit these businesses to see how they are managing their operations, probably do some audits to see if what they are collecting is being reported back.  I am not suggesting that they are doing anything wrong, but it makes us question.  So from that end, I think it’s something positive came out from it. But most of all, the citizens were excited, that they are saying well, in effect, we’ve gotten a 12.5% discount or if you want to be mathematical and take it from the dollar, take it down from that…the point is they’re getting a huge discount.”