Nothing is voluntary in paying taxes due

Mar 23, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

At last Thursday’s press conference, the General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, Bharrat Jagdeo, as is his wont, held forth with an air of authority on matters of law and taxation, displaying a confidence unburdened by actual knowledge. In yet another sermon from his self-appointed pulpit, he declared that the payment of taxes to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is based on a system of voluntary compliance— a statement so outrageously inaccurate that one wonders whether it was made in jest or in earnest ignorance.

Let us be charitable and assume the latter. After all, Mr. Jagdeo is an economist, not a tax attorney, and it is not his fault if he lacks even the rudimentary understanding of Guyana’s tax laws. But for the sake of public enlightenment, it must be stated clearly: under the law, every taxpayer is required to pay the full and accurate amount of taxes due. There is nothing voluntary about it. Importers, for instance, are legally bound to declare the true value of goods, and the GRA, in turn, undertakes an assessment of taxes payable. Once assessed, the taxpayer must pay the amount due—unless he chooses to challenge the assessment. The system is structured, not as an honour-based arrangement where the taxpayer may pay whatever he feels is appropriate, but as an enforceable legal obligation.

But Mr. Jagdeo’s misconceptions did not end there. His misapprehension of the legal framework extended to an inversion of the burden of proof in cases of tax fraud. Under the English criminal law system, which Guyana follows, once an importer has paid the assessed taxes, the onus shifts to the GRA to establish that a fraudulent declaration has been made. It is for the GRA—not the taxpayer—to prove that there has been tax evasion. To demand that an importer prove he has not evaded taxes is to pervert one of the fundamental tenets of our legal system: the presumption of innocence.

Likewise, Mr. Jagdeo would do well to familiarize himself with the legal standard governing remigration concessions. Here, too, the burden falls on the GRA to establish that an individual has not met the statutory residency requirements—not on the remigrant to prove compliance. This is not a matter of political spin or bureaucratic discretion; it is a matter of law.

But, perhaps, it is asking too much to expect a man, long accustomed to issuing decrees, to concern himself with the finer points of legal doctrine. As we have seen time and again, Mr. Jagdeo prefers the world as he imagines it—where laws are infinitely elastic, facts are subject to creative reinterpretation, and the burden of proof lies wherever it is most convenient for him. It would be almost amusing, were it not so dangerously misleading.

Sincerely,

Rupnauth Hardyal

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