Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Ques­tions have arisen as to how a car rental com­pa­ny with­out any val­ue added tax (VAT) reg­is­tra­tion has been able to se­cure more than $108,000 in month­ly con­tracts at the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS). Busi­ness­man Rasheed Khan is the own­er of the Cen­tral-based car firm, lo­cat­ed at Mon­trose Mall, Main Road, Ch­agua­nas.

The busi­ness­man, as pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, has been sup­ply­ing ten Nis­san Ti­da four-door sedans to MTS at a month­ly rate of $62,000 for the ve­hi­cles since 2011. In ad­di­tion, Khan has al­so been con­tract­ed on a month­ly ba­sis to pro­vide rental for five Ford Ranger vans. The five vans are rent­ed at a cost of $46,000.

While MTS chair­man Jim Mu­rad Mo­hammed, in a re­port, jus­ti­fied the rental of the cars, as to how Khan has been able to evade pay­ing the tax­es re­mains a mys­tery. In­voic­es sub­mit­ted by Khan that have been ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian fail to state a VAT reg­is­tra­tion num­ber. The busi­ness­man ad­mit­ted to Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day that his com­pa­ny was not VAT reg­is­tered.

Khan said the com­pa­ny com­menced op­er­a­tions in Ju­ly of last year. How­ev­er, the busi­ness­man claimed that his com­pa­ny had re­ceived VAT clear­ance. Checks, how­ev­er, re­vealed that in or­der for a com­pa­ny to re­ceive a VAT clear­ance cer­tifi­cate it must be VAT reg­is­tered. So how Khan re­ceived VAT clear­ance re­mains un­clear.

Charg­ing that he was aware who was be­hind the "mis­chie­vous plot" Khan said: "They are try­ing to make mis­chief. They start­ed this a long time ago and I know who the peo­ple are be­hind this. It is a new busi­ness we start­ed and when you start a new busi­ness you do not get VAT reg­is­tra­tion right away. You have to reach the ceil­ing and then you have a year in which you can ap­ply to be VAT reg­is­tered."

Khan said he vis­it­ed the VAT of­fice and re­ceived a let­ter. "We have VAT clear­ance and every­thing but peo­ple do not know that fact but they are in­tent on mak­ing mis­chief. If you are not VAT reg­is­tered you do not have to state that you have VAT clear­ance, any busi­ness per­son knows this.

"When you are VAT reg­is­tered you have to sub­mit a VAT in­voice. I have not done this be­cause I am not VAT reg­is­tered. If any­one wants to know or see, I have the doc­u­ment. I am try­ing to un­der­stand what is the sig­nif­i­cance of all of this?" At­tempts to con­tact Mo­hammed proved fu­tile yes­ter­day.