Government plans to decentralise tax collection

National

PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill says the Government plans to decentralise the collection of the Goods and Service Tax to the 22 provincial governments.
He said many companies operating in the country were not paying taxes because the responsibility of regulating and collecting tax was being centralised at the Internal Revenue Commission.
“We are looking into how we can allow provincial governments to collect sales tax (GST) themselves,” O’Neill said.
“A large number of companies operating in the provinces are not paying their fair share of tax to the Government because we are centralising that responsibility to the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC).”
O’Neill said the regulation and self-assessment by IRC were not working.
“There are quite a large number of companies operating in the county not paying their fair share of the taxes.
“That is why provincial governments are better suited because they are on location and they are able to collect the taxes much better. So over the next few weeks, when we are framing the 2018 budget, we will be working on some of the details around this,” O’Neill said.
He said this would help the provincial governments to generate revenue to meet the costs of delivering services and taking developments.