The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment says the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment (IRD) has made a de­mand for an amount ex­ceed­ing EC$24 mil­lion (about US$9 mil­lion) in tax­es col­lect­ed by the San­dals ho­tel here owned by the Ja­maica-based San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al (SRI) for the pe­ri­od 2017 and 2021.

Ear­li­er this month, Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, speak­ing on his week­ly ra­dio pro­gramme, called on the SRI to con­sid­er re­mov­ing its prop­er­ty in his coun­try af­ter he claimed that the lux­u­ry ho­tel brand, San­dals, had adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of not want­i­ng to pay tax­es.

A state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing not­ed that the IRD Com­mis­sion­er, Ralph Warn­er, his Deputy, a Le­gal Ad­vi­sor and a tech­ni­cian had been in­vit­ed to at­tend the Cab­i­net meet­ing to ad­dress the “brew­ing AB­ST (An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Sales Tax) dis­cord with San­dals Re­sort and Spa”.

The state­ment said that Prime Min­is­ter Browne “has learned from the IRD that the re­sort has not been pay­ing-over all the AB­ST which it has col­lect­ed from its cus­tomers, up­on check­out.”

It de­scribed the AB­ST as a tax which is im­posed on the to­tal­i­ty of the bill that a guest at the ho­tel has in­curred dur­ing their stay.

“It is the Gov­ern­ment’s mon­ey, col­lect­ed by the ho­tel on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment. Dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, an arrange­ment had been made with the prop­er­ty for it to deduct a por­tion of the AB­ST to com­pen­sate for the mar­ket­ing of the An­tigua des­ti­na­tion when the re­sort was ad­ver­tised,” the state­ment said.

It added that when the Browne ad­min­is­tra­tion learned of this prac­tice, “it im­me­di­ate­ly re­versed that pol­i­cy and re­quired the ho­tel to pay 100 per cent of its AB­ST col­lec­tion to the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment.

“It ap­pears that the re­sort has re-com­menced mak­ing sim­i­lar de­duc­tions; the IRD has made a de­mand for an amount ex­ceed­ing $24 mil­lion col­lect­ed be­tween 2017 and 2021. The IRD is con­tin­u­ing its au­dit to in­ves­ti­gate the deficit in pay­ments made in 2022 and 2023,” the Cab­i­net state­ment added.

It said that Cab­i­net has al­so learned that work­ers at the ho­tel are not al­lowed to ac­cept tips from cus­tomers but must place all tips re­ceived in­to a pool, which goes to­wards fund­ing the San­dals Foun­da­tion.

“The Cab­i­net is con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion that will com­pel hote­liers to pay tips to work­ers and not to di­vert those re­sources to oth­er ends.”

SRI and San­dals have not is­sued any pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter, but me­dia re­ports here Fri­day said that the mat­ter is head­ing for the High Court with the lux­u­ry re­sort ask­ing the court to or­der a new as­sess­ment of its tax li­a­bil­i­ty.

The me­dia said that the court ac­tion names Warn­er, who San­dals claims ig­nored a pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ment in the process of the lat­est as­sess­ment.

But Warn­er is quot­ed as say­ing he views the court mat­ter as an at­tempt by the re­sort to de­lay the process.

“San­dals is claim­ing that I, as IRD Com­mis­sion­er, usurped the au­thor­i­ty of the In­come Tax Ap­peal Board when the as­sess­ment was done,” he said, adding that it is not the role of the Com­mis­sion­er of IRD to take a mat­ter to the In­come Tax Ap­peal Board.

“That is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the client if the de­ci­sions from the dif­fer­ent stages, as laid down by the law, are not to the client’s lik­ing; the board is part of the process es­tab­lished by the law to hear com­plaints from clients,” Warn­er is quot­ed by the me­dia here as say­ing.

San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al was found­ed by Gor­don “Butch” Stew­art, who died in Jan­u­ary 2021. His son, Adam, is now the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of SRI. (CMC)