Guyana Stores Limited (GSL) has “done this [it] had to do” in relation to repaying a $3.8 billion debt owed to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), company co-owner Tony Yassin said.
Speaking to Stabroek News in his GSL office last week, Yassin was unwilling to elaborate on the settlement between the company and the GRA, but said they had ‘done what we had to do’. and had paid a certain amount of money.
However, he declined to say how much and said he hopes the matter is now settled between the company and the tax office. He said the move was not a simple task but they had paid their money before the end of the amnesty period.
In July last year, GRA Commissioner General Godfrey Statia told Stabroek News that GSL had paid the GRA “a few hundred million” and that discussions were ongoing as to how the rest of its $3.8 billion tax debt would be paid. The debt is the result of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruling against GSL’s constitutional challenge to the 2% minimum corporate tax imposed by the GRA under the Taxation Acts (Amendment) Act ). GSL has received two extensions to make its payments to the GRA since the March 2018 decision.
The court told GSL that it should have used the specialized procedure under the Income Tax Act to challenge the GRA, rather than filing claims for constitutional relief in cases where not only an alternative remedy was available, but that remedy was the natural remedy provided by law. . To do otherwise, he argued, was “an abuse of process.”
GSL received a claim, dated May 2012, from the then Commissioner General of the GRA, Khurshid Sattaur, for the sum of $3,811,346,397 in unpaid taxes and elected to sue in the courts of Guyana.
Having lost in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal, GSL appealed the case to the CCJ, which subsequently dismissed GSL’s appeal and ordered the company to pay the costs to the three defendants: the Attorney General, the tax administration and the Commissioner-General.
Stabroek News also tried to recruit Statia last week to no avail.
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