At first it was on pace to be implemented imminently - but, facing resistance from the business sector, the timeline for transitioning from the Belize Tax Service to a Semi Autonomous Revenue Authority has definitely been put at half speed.
Yesterday, the Financial Secretary told us that there is a lot of groundwork to put in before SARA is activated, starting with new legislation.
Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary
"It's a work in progress. As you know, SARA is an acronym for semi-autonomous, Revenue Administration. And there's a number of things. First of all, we have to do a legislation to create the thing. The legislation has to provide for what the duties and responsibilities, a relationship between that administration and, and the government, the collecting government money as an agent and said being it and but very importantly, there's also the question of HR, human resources and stuff. So it's a work in progress. In fact, we're meeting with the unions to see because we recognize your staff are your employees. They have certain rights and to have certain, responsibilities, you know, and, we don't want to misstep in and do anything would be outside the law, but more importantly, something that would be negative rather than positive to the system."
We'll keep following it.
