PM Briceno Pushes For Increased Awareness Amid Tax Department Transition to SARA

Prime Minister John Briceno says that, instead of scaling back efforts to transition the Belize Tax Service Department into a Semi-Autonomous Revenue Authority (SARA), greater emphasis is being placed on awareness. Sources within the Public Service told Love News that the transition appeared to be suffering delays due to pushback from the more than 200 staffers at the BTSD. The Prime Minister says that in the coming weeks the BTSD will be embarking on an awareness campaign, to the employees, the media, and the wider public to dispel what he describes as misinformation being circulated. He also stressed that the new SARA structure will allow the department to staff employees who are committed to the vision of taking the department forward.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “I think the pushback is mostly from the Public Service Union and the simple reason they’re doing that is they’re protecting their interests and that’s okay, that’s what they should be doing. The pushback simply is not true. What we’re doing is that there have been a lot of misconceptions about what SARA is all about. And people are saying, oh you’ll be able to tax you more and you don’t have to give receipts, confusing it with digital invoicing. So what we told Mrs. Longsworth, the director for Belize Tax Service, BTS, I said, I said we don’t need to go to a PR campaign we need to go to an educational campaign. Meet the different sectors, meet the media, meet the private sector, meet NGOs and everybody and explain to them that what we’re doing is simply moving the BTS into a semi-autonomous authority. They will still report to the Ministry of Finance but then they can be able to better manage the staff. The service that they provide at BTS is very technical.  In many instances we have people there that do not have the wherewithal to provide that, one. Secondly, as what Mrs. Longsworth pointed out to us, they have, since they set up the BTS they have provided more than 250 training sessions to the staff and many of them are saying they’re not interested, they don’t like that. And so they’re not putting their wherewithal to be able to provide the necessary service that our citizens deserve or need. And so by setting up a semi-autonomous authority, it gives the tax service an opportunity to be able to look at the employees and tell them, okay which one of you are interested to work with us?  Come in. We’re not saying you can’t get a job, but come in and let’s talk and let’s interview you to see if that’s what you really want to do and if that’s what you really want to do then you will stay. If you don’t want to do that then you can go back to the public service.”

Love News understands that the BTSD had sent out a survey to staff to be completed by August 15 and has since been holding small-scale meetings at its offices countrywide