The list of tax offenders should never have been publicized - that's what PM John Briceno said today. Yesterday, we told you about the list of businesses whose names were published by the Belize Tax Service because they were repeat defaulters. The amount of money owed ranged from $6,000 to $8 million. According to the director general, this list was published after multiple attempts to work with these entities or individuals.
But Briceno today showed sympathy for the offenders - and said that rather than name and shame, Tax Services should work to find a solution:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"It's unfortunate that that was made public. It should have not, and I'm saying this for myself, it should have not been made public and we should have continued working with these individuals to work with them. As you know there has been tremendous growth in the economy over the past 4 years and nobody can dispute the fact but it's unfortunate that some small businesses, many instances because they don't know how to go about filing their taxes, are in problems but we stepped in whenever they asked us for help. We can't write off taxes, it's only the National Assembly. But how do we help? We would then try to negotiate with BTS, Belize Tax Service, to try to remove the interest or the penalties so we could make it more affordable, we do not want to get anybody out of business, we want more businesses, we want more entrepreneurs, that's why we've been doing a lot of work with Belgrade, working with a lot of small businesses for them to be able to thrive in this growing economy."
