$45m tax refunds

Ropate Valemei
Thursday, March 28, 2013

THE Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority has set a target of $45million for income tax refunds this year.

FRCA chief executive officer Jitoko Tikolevu said more than $16.55m was refunded to 31,447 people.

So far, 46,446 people had applied for tax returns since January totalling more than $21.69m.

"For the 46,446 people who had applied, 36,186 were salary and wage earners while 8243 applications were businesses and 2017 applications were from companies," he said yesterday.

"A total of 14,969 people still have their tax return processed — 11,972 applications are salary and wage earners, 2617 applications are from businesses and 380 applications from companies." Mr Tikolevu said there were challenges faced by the authority in terms of processing tax returns.

"This includes incomplete tax returns lodged by taxpayers such as unsigned returns, bank account details not provided on the return (form), incomplete accounts, part-year employment, and redundancy and lump sum payments without supporting documents," he said.

Mr Tikolevu said the authority was on a mission to be the premier revenue collection, border management and trade facilitation agency in the region.

Meanwhile, the authority made public recently that the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Final Withholding Tax reporting requirements for 2013 were now in effect.

"We acknowledge the effort put in by all stakeholders, however, with the implementation of any new process, teething problems are expected," he said.

The teething problems, he said, would be addressed on an individual basis and customers would be contacted by their officers in the next two weeks. Mr Tikolevu said they continued to receive incomplete applications for Tax Identification Number (TIN) registration.