PM Briceño Says, “Even My Brother Jaime Fraid For The Tax People!”

For many small business owners, paying taxes is only part of the challenge. Understanding the rules and navigating the compliance process can be just as daunting. Now, the government is proposing new legislation aimed at making that process less intimidating and giving entrepreneurs more room to grow. Prime Minister John Briceño unveiled the proposed Micro-Enterprise and Entrepreneur Support Bill at this year’s EntreCon conference, drawing applause from the audience. But what will the legislation actually change for small businesses? Director of Investment Policy Lincoln Blake explains.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Mek I tell you something. Everybody afraid for the tax people then.  And I know you know that, right? All of a sudden, you miss one lee line and then they come at you with all kind of penalties and all kind of interest. I like to laugh at this. But even my brother Jaime, afraid for the tax people then, you could imagine. You know, I didn’t have access to the Minister of Finance. I think he’s in the Minister of Finance most days. And he said, my dear boy, the people crazy. I hope nobody from the tax department is there right now noh true. Because they might come after us after this. But it’s true. You know, I think that, and I’ve been having this argument and we need to fix it, that with the tax department, we want to make sure that you pay the taxes that you’re supposed to pay.”

 

Lincoln Blake, Director of Investment Policy and Compliance Unit

“We try to look at how we could assist them, especially in payments and we came up with a, with a standard fee, an annual fee that they would be able to pay, just like a trade license. A standard fee, but something that we’d be able to afford and we cap it by different categories, by the amount of sales that you have. And of course, the reporting also. The reporting is something that we notice that everyone, all the regulators are asking for the same information. So just send your information to one location and then distribute it. Same thing with the payment. We have, like, four different agencies collecting from these small entities. Give them a little discount, let one person collect from them, and then distribute the payment to all the regulators. So we’re trying to make it easy for them so that they have more time to make money.”

 

Instead of entrepreneurs having to navigate business tax, trade license and companies registry, the new legislation will introduce a one-stop desk for all business regulatory processes.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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