The scary thing is... if they do actually collect all of this we STILL won't see any improvements to infrastructure, health care, social services etc. Somehow this additional money will poof out of existence. Contracts will get bigger but yet the work will never be completed and the quality will be so poor that whatever is constructed or repaired will not be useable.
The more money government gets the more money that disappears into the black hole of corruption.

When it comes to Real Property Tax arrears they always try to pin the blame on foreigners. And without a doubt there will be some foreigners who are in arrears, it is statistics. But I am certain that a very large proportion are Bahamian property owners, especially commercial property owners. These will be many of the same persons who have traditionally been allowed to incur very, very large outstanding bills owing to BPL and Water&Sewerage. Much easier to pin the blame on “the others” than ones own.

The other big issue is that since the online RPT portal that was implemented in 2015 went down and finally disappeared in 2020 the existing dysfunctional and convoluted system for getting RPT bills, paying for them and getting the Tax Certificate has not made for an efficient or user-friendly ability to pay. This is a perfect example of the DIR and government being the authors of their own problem.

Well, can he give us the number of non-compliant folks that are non-compliant because of posting errors at NIB and other agencies? Thought they were all on computers. Nobody know how to use them or are the computers so slow it takes years for them to update the data?
Seems to me lots of folks are asleep at their government jobs even when they show up. Seems they know who everybody is but wait years to do again. A simple call from an agency could help a lot. But that is asking too much. And said here and many times, you cannot get them to answer their phones either. Even if you get things straight by going in by person, it still takes weeks and longer to get everything corrected. In the meantime, they block your imports. I guess after they bankrupt us all because of their foolish actions and being lazy, we can all go get "stay at home" checks.

“Most property taxes are owned by foreign-owned properties because you know Bahamians have a wide level exemption, so this is probably driven mostly by non-Bahamian-owned properties,” he said.

So basically this is just a guess as he has no idea, but it sounds good to say it won't affect Bahamians .

is this a tail wag dog thing? am i missing something? The property tax role is, by law, supposed to be gazetted and published annually. Has that ever happened in the past 50 years? Why not simply name and shame the delinquents of property tax? seems a very simple exercise but then again the property tax office is such a mess that publishing would reveal clearly to the world how much of a dismal quagmire that office is in. I believe Mr. Wilson is underqualified for the position he holds which is why he makes these unfounded statements.

2nd point is that VAT registrants are tax collectors for the govt. A business is not paying but collecting VAT on behalf of the Bahamian people. Wilson said 'they aren't paying' when he should have said they are "not collecting". or does he mean to elaborate and state that they are collecting but not paying? which is in essence theft from the Bahamas Government and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. but wait, do we have cronyism at work here? Will they got off with a slap on the wrist? such blatant in your face criminality happening all over the place in this country. they need to check into many other businesses, maybd hire that old secret shopper company to conduct due diligence throughout the Bahamas on VAT compliance?

The problem is that every minister that gets appointed soon realizes that fixing this absolutely broken system is WAY too difficult, so they simply continue along trying to squeeze orange juice out of a sour lime.
The ONLY success Government has had in the last 50 years is with the new process and technology for issuing passports.

Mr. Wilson, how about you tell us when the hundreds of millions of dollars owed by the government to the peoples NIB Fund will be repaid?
I paid yinna for fifty years but now its time for yinnas to pay me our money done spend and da well done dry.

Exactly. He needs to talk what government owes NIB.