Latest update January 26th, 2025 8:00 AM
Guyanese in 3 years paid $22B more in taxes – AG Report
Kaieteur News – Guyana last year budgeted to collect, through its recurrent sources of revenue such as taxes, fees and other such payments, $226.5B.
Government last year, however, collected $230.4B in current revenue or some $4B more than it had budgeted to receive.
Auditor General, Deodat Sharma
As such, it would mean that various categories of businesses and individuals doing business in Guyana would have forked over to government some $4B more than it had anticipated.
This much is documented in the Auditor General (AG’s) Report, accounting for spending by government ministries, agencies and regional departments.
According to the AG, this has been a trend continuing over the past three years, with government routinely collecting more than it had anticipated.
In 2018, government had estimated collecting some $201.8B but actually collected $217B—some $15B more than anticipated.
The following year, 2019, the administration had projected collecting $238.3B but in fact collected $240.6B more than 2.2B more than anticipated.
As such, it would mean that between 2018 and 2020, Guyanese would have paid over to government some $22B more in taxes than was projected by government.
According to the Audit Report, “Current Revenue collections for 2020 surpassed the approved estimates by a net amount of $3.907 billion.”
It was noted that the categories with higher collections of $12.249 billion cushioned the categories with shortfalls of $8.342 billion.
Revenues budgeted to be collected by government include monies to from the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), responsible for collecting payments such as Value Added Tax (VAT), Pay as You Earn (PAYE), Corporation Tax, Withholding Tax and Property Taxes, Import Duties, among others.
These were in addition to other sources of revenue received under the Ministry of Finance, such as dividends to be collected from public corporations and statutory transfers, among other sources.
The report documented that the Ministry responded saying, central Government current receipts for 2020 surpassed the budgeted amount by $3.907 billion and that the main contributors were internal revenue, miscellaneous receipts, and excise taxes which exceeded the budgeted amount by $6.032 billion, $3.407 billion, and $1.884 billion respectively.
The higher collections from internal revenue were derived from the sub-category of private corporation income tax of $3.717 billion, personal income tax of $1.327 billion, self-employed income tax $479.385 million and net property tax of $511.675M. Arrears collected for corporation income tax was $932.2 million, personal income tax was $855.9 million and net property tax was $84.8 million. Revenue collections from corporation income tax surpassed the budgeted amount on account of larger remittances from companies within the financial sector and, the oil and gas sector.
Miscellaneous receipts increased by $3.407 billion mainly due to closures of bank accounts valued at $2.644 billion, according to the audit report.
Excise taxes, the Auditor General said, recorded higher-than-expected revenues of $1.883 billion.
The increase resulted from larger collections from petroleum products of $1.186 billion and motor vehicles of $447.111M.
According to the Audit Report, “the larger-than anticipated revenue collection from petroleum products were due to higher oil prices and quantities imported during the period August to December 2020.”
Capital Revenue collections for 2020 on the other hand were recorded at below the approved estimate, by a net amount of negative $6.600 billion, meaning there was a 24 percent shortfall.
To this end, the AG said, “the negative variances recorded for capital revenue reflected lower disbursements of external grants and loans from the various Multilateral Institutions that may be attributed to challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, delays in realigning programmed activities and poor project implementation.”
Four External Grants and External Loans totalling $645.676M were budgeted for in 2020. However, no collections were received during the year under review.
These include grants and loans from China, the Islamic Development Bank and the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) Project Loan.
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