Brad's Gaming Company and Brad's Gaming Group are required to pay $5 million in business tax after a High Court ruling yesterday.
High Court Justice Nadine Nabie has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Kim Wai Chee and Brad's Gaming Company against the Director General of Tax Administration. The claimants were challenging more than $4.3 million in retroactive "best judgment" tax assessments, arguing the process was unfair and unlawful. However, the court ruled the lawsuit was an abuse of process, stating the proper avenue to challenge tax assessments is through the statutory review process under the Tax Administration and Procedure Act.
Yesterday, Senior Counsel Magali Marin-Young, representing the Tax Administration and Attorney General, spoke on the High Court's decision to throw out the claim:
Magali Marin Young, Attorney
"Basically, the former owners of the Boledo, Lottery, Brad's Gaming Company Limited and Brad's Gaming Group, as well as Mr. Kim Wai Chee, brought a claim saying that the Director General of the Belize Tax Service had breached their fundamental rights, equal protection of the law and protection of the law. The background story is that the Director General had since 2020 been requesting the financial records for these companies, and there were a myriad of excuses given for officers, including that the cloud hosting was in China and that Brad's could not afford to maintain the cloud hosting that had these financial records, you name it, they came up with all kinds of excuses, they gave limited access, and with the limited access, when the tax officers went back, they were told the cloud hosting was no longer in existence. So the Director General since 2020 has been trying to get financial records on these companies to do a tax assessment. Because these companies were not cooperative in providing the financial records, the Director General had to do what is called a best assessment."
"In 2023, she did assessments for both companies for the tax period 2010 to 2023, and when she did her assessments, she served it on Mr. Kim Wai Chee's place of operation, which everybody knows where Brad's operates in the Farmer's Market. The companies took issue and said, 'Oh no, you needed to have served us at our registered office,' and so the notices were incorrect, and they used every possible technical argument they could, and ultimately, the learned trial judge dismissed all their grounds outright and said, 'No, you guys didn't cooperate with the Director General and she had no choice but to do a best judgment assessment.'"
"It was for Brad's Gaming Company $1,199,211.94, and for Brad's Gaming Group, it was $3,130,637.69."
We note that the judgment says, "there is no liability for Mr. Chee to incur the tax liability of the corporate claimants," end quote-which means that enforcement of this assessment would have to be against the companies, not Kim Chee personally, which may prove to be a challenge. Dean Barrow, who represented Brad's, says they will appeal the cost order.
