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$80m in penalties collected from tax evaders in Fiji

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority (FRCA) has collected $80 million (US$40 million) in penalties from tax evaders.

With investigations ongoing, the FRCA is expected to collect more than $150 million (US$75 million) for this financial year.

FRCA Chief Executive, Visvanath Das says some people are still not paying their taxes despite numerous warnings.

“At the moment as to date in this current financial year, we have collected up to eighty million dollars from taxes that were not paid and there are a number of cases still open and back in 2006, the tax loss from black economy was seven hundred and sixteen million and of course at that time the revenue being one third of what we collect now so we can estimate the evasion are still happening and still out there.”

Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says tax evasion does not help the country’s development as it can tremendously affect economic growth.

“Government has a policy of ensuring that we have proper accountability, transparency and we want businesses to make money, we want them to make revenue and do investments but if the systems is such. Then the benefits of what the government is doing will not get passed on to everybody else. It does not lead to economic development or growth and more importantly is does not empower individual Fijians, only empowers one or two in an illegitimate manner.”

The FRCA says non-compliant taxpayers will face the full brunt of the law. SOURCE: FBC NEWS
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