Belize Tax Service Calls Second Annual GST-Free Weekend a Success

With Christmas just days away, you know what that means, packed streets, crowded stores, and shoppers on the hunt for those last-minute deals. Over the weekend, Belizeans had even more reason to hit the shops thanks to the government’s second annual GST-free Christmas weekend. From long checkout lines to jam-packed parking lots, the rush was real as shoppers took advantage of the chance to skip that usual twelve-and-a-half percent General Sales Tax. This marks the third GST-free weekend in Belize, following one earlier this year for back-to-school shopping. Now, while we won’t see the official numbers until January, the Deputy Director General of the Belize Tax Service says she’s feeling optimistic about this year’s turnout.

 

Vilma Broaster, Deputy Director General, Belize Tax Service

“The amount of calls was not as much as we had for from last year. So, this year we did have calls, but it was not to that extent. There were taxpayers, consumers who had called in and said that they were still being charged the GST. We note that for some business places that they did charge the GST, but they gave you the subtotal for you to pay. So those were some of the issues that we found. It was not on that large scale, like the one that we had in December of last year.”

 

Britney Gordon

“And in terms of volume of people did we see the same level of excitement and just hype around it as we did last year?”

 

Vilma Broaster

“I should say that I did go out and I couldn’t get to, in some business establishment, there was no parking space, so you have had to come back. I said, you know what? I will leave it for the Sunday, go early in the morning and hopefully you would not have had that crowd, but that the same thing was there for Sunday. So, there was a lot of consumers. I would say it was a successful round based on what the government was looking at because it’s trying to make the consumers happy as well as to keep the dollars at home. So I do believe that you can see that the objective was met. It’s a tax break for the consumers. So it is then left up to us to then look at the numbers and then inform ministry of Finance of what the end result was.”

 

Britney Gordon

“And do we think that it’s likely that this will be something we continue to see the government push in the years to come with back to school and Christmas?”

 

Vilma Broaster

“Yes. Because that is what have been stated. And as well as I do believe, we may need to make a little tweak to it. So we are going to put together some recommendations to the government. And then we see how that goes. And then we will inform the consumers of what will take place along with the business persons as well.”