The Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority (FRCA) is investigating a company for under-declaring their sales by more than $16.5 million dollars to evade VAT and income tax derived through these sales.

Authority chief executive Visvanath Das said it has been established that the company was under-declaring its sales for the past three years.

Mr Das said as such the Government has lost out on the subsequent VAT and income taxes that was supposed to be paid correctly and on time.

“Some other businesses are also being investigated for similar offenses,”  he said.

“We continue to receive complaints from law-abiding taxpayers about these dodgy traders on a daily basis.”

“Under the Tax Administration Decree, the maximum penalty for this type of offences is 300 per cent of the total taxes due.”

Mr Das said FRCA will come down hard on companies who are evading duties and taxes.

“We continue to discover serious non-compliance behaviours in terms of the non-lodgement of VAT returns and due payments,” he added.

“Taxpayers are strongly reminded that VAT is trust money and must be paid to Government on time. No penalty remission will be granted to such non-compliance behaviours”.

FRCA has reminded taxpayers to engage registered tax agents for preparation and lodgement of VAT returns.

Mr Das said a number of complaints have been received where un-registered tax agents were engaged to lodge returns.

Taxpayers paid substantial amount of fees as well as VAT payments to these un-registered tax agents, however, neither returns were lodged nor payments remitted to FRCA.

Whilst FRCA is encouraging self-assessment and voluntary compliance, it is totally unacceptable that this partnership and trust of the tax office is being abused.

He reiterated FRCA will not tolerate this and offenders will have to face full brunt of the law.

According to Mr Das, they are working towards increasing business efficiencies through modernisation of processes.

“As part of Government’s commitment to facilitate businesses, we continue to roll out initiatives to provide support to contributors to the Fijian economy.”

Source: FRCA

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