• Former BCCEC chairman supports government’s enhanced audit verification process

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A former Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) chairman said the government is “not grasping at straws” with its new enhanced Business Licence audit verification process.

Gowon Bowe, Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) chief executive, told Tribune Business the government wanting certified audits by April 2024 from all companies who gross over $5m was always a requirement and it is unfair to misrepresent it as going after businesses.

The requirement, passed in the 2023 budget, will require companies with turnover above $5m to produce audited accounts by April 2024. Critics, including the BCCEC, say the April deadline is too aggressive for most of the impacted businesses.

Mr Bowe said: “Those businesses now have to have their revenue number certified and what the government is doing now is increasing the level of attestation and that is to be determined on if its necessary and should the Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) be able to more independently verify, and to be honest, target those, who may be seen as misrepresenting their revenues.”

There are more details that need to be discussed over the deadline impasse, but businesses must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”.

Mr Bowe also said: “The government certainly should be collecting all revenues that it’s entitled to, and persons that may have benefiting from deficiencies in the tax collection system should not have seen that as windfall because they were effectively stealing from the wider society.”

That notwithstanding, the government may be “overly optimistic” on what they might generate in revenue, but they are “not grasping at straws” on this new process.

Mr Bowe, chiding the government, said: “But they need to demonstrate that same level of overoptimism in what they can reduce in expenditure because it’s two sides. You can’t say, well, I’m going to grow revenue by what a number of persons have indicated as very optimistic targets, but not demonstrated you’re taking the very hard actions to reduce expenditure.”

He also said: “Sometimes those hard actions mean a reduction in the social services provided, it may mean a reduction in some of the government services that are provided, because we simply are not able to afford them.

“So we have to be careful about giving the impression that we can be the provider of all things, without persons having to pay their fair share of taxes, because we don’t have the money tree that you can shake.”