The di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the Be­lize Tax Ser­vice (BTS), Michelle Longsworth, has de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to be­come a se­mi-au­tonomous rev­enue au­thor­i­ty, known as SARA.

The tran­si­tion will oc­cur in De­cem­ber and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Union (PSU) says it is not con­vinced that the move will not af­fect its mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to pen­sions, gra­tu­ities, and al­lowances that work­ers have earned over the years.

Un­der the new ini­tia­tive, cur­rent em­ploy­ees will ei­ther be re­as­signed with­in the pub­lic sec­tor or have to ap­ply for a po­si­tion in the new sys­tem.

“As pub­lic of­fi­cers. if you re­sign from the pub­lic ser­vice right now, you know what your en­ti­tle­ments are. If you have served 10 years, you are en­ti­tled to a gra­tu­ity. If you have served 15 years and more, you are en­ti­tled to a gra­tu­ity and a pen­sion that re­mains in­tact,” Longsworth said in an in­ter­view with the Greater Be­lize Me­dia (GBM) tele­vi­sion net­work.

She told view­ers that no­body will lose if they choose to go over to the SARA, not­ing that cur­rent­ly “if you choose to take ear­ly re­tire­ment, you re­ceive all your ben­e­fits.

“If you’re over 50 years, that does not change. And every staff mem­ber that our pub­lic of­fi­cers, they know how we are gov­erned un­der the pub­lic ser­vice reg­u­la­tions and that does not change.”

She said that dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, re­gard­ing work­ers who are ba­si­cal­ly start­ing from scratch to build up their ben­e­fits again.

”So that is a dis­cus­sion that we are hav­ing with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, and you are speak­ing to on­ly per­sons who have, let’s say five years to nine years and 11 months, those per­sons who have al­most reached 10 years.

“Okay…those are the per­sons we have a list of them. We have de­ter­mined what it would cost to maybe of­fer them a com­pen­sa­tion pack­age, but that is in dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Fi­nance. And once we have some ap­proval or we will then take that to the staff who are in that cat­e­go­ry be­cause there’s on­ly a small amount in that cat­e­go­ry.”

Longsworth said she be­lieves the new sys­tem will stream­line op­er­a­tions and boost per­for­mance and that it is not just about ef­fi­cien­cy, since there are al­so con­cerns about trans­paren­cy.

There are con­cerns that SARA could open the door to shady spend­ing through gov­ern­ment-award­ed con­tracts, but Longsworth chal­lenged that nar­ra­tive say­ing all rev­enue col­lect­ed will still go straight in­to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund.

She aaid SARA won’t have the pow­er to spend tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and nei­ther will it be a pri­vate com­pa­ny, re­main­ing un­der pub­lic scruti­ny, just like any oth­er gov­ern­ment body.

“When you, in any or­gan­i­sa­tion, in any busi­ness, when you plan, you have to plan for a fu­ture. You have to be pre­pared for the fu­ture. Hav­ing a new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture or a gov­er­nance struc­ture, we have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion things that present­ly as a de­part­ment we do not have in place, and we have to en­sure that it is in place so that we can prop­er­ly gov­ern.

“It does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that im­me­di­ate­ly on the tran­si­tion, you’ll hire all these ex­tra peo­ple. Does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that. It means that you are prepar­ing for fu­ture changes in your tax land­scape.”

Longsworth said that the tax ad­min­is­tra­tion has to re­main ag­ile, adding” if we are not, if we on­ly pre­pare for next year, some change hap­pens the year af­ter and we have to go back to plan­ning then it can be said, we did not plan prop­er­ly, so we have to pre­pare a plan pro­ject­ing on how the tax land­scape is evolv­ing.

“That is a re­spon­si­ble way to move for­ward. If you look at any busi­ness, even gov­ern­ment as a whole, you have to plan for these things. And if you don’t plan, then you plan to fail. I don’t know with re­gards to the con­tracts that are there….

“The SARA will still be re­spon­si­ble to the Min­istry of Fi­nance, all the rev­enue that we are col­lect­ing now, and we will be col­lect­ing un­der the SARA, will re­main in the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. That does not change. We will have no ju­ris­dic­tion to spend tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. It goes and it re­mains in the con­sol­i­dat­ed rev­enue fund.”

Longsworth has al­so ad­dressed the safe­ty of per­son­al da­ta, say­ing there’s no need to wor­ry and that da­ta pro­tec­tion has been a top pri­or­i­ty.

She said un­der the cur­rent sys­tem, the de­part­ment has al­ready been go­ing through strict in­ter­na­tion­al as­sess­ments to en­sure se­cure in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and that the lev­el of scruti­ny won’t stop once SARA comes in­to op­er­a­tion.

“We can­not ad­vise the gov­ern­ment if we don’t have the req­ui­site da­ta. The use of elec­tron­ic da­ta has ac­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ed us now that we’re col­lect­ing elec­tron­ic da­ta to ad­vise the gov­ern­ment on cer­tain ar­eas that can im­pact the pub­lic.”

She said that tax ad­min­is­tra­tions are fac­ing grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions from cross-bor­der da­ta ex­change to tack­ling cryp­to trans­ac­tion au­to­mat­ic ex­change, a whole oth­er set of re­quire­ments from a tax ad­min­is­tra­tion, which re­quires that the staff be equipped.

“To ad­dress these oblig­a­tions as a tax ad­min­is­tra­tion….means that we have to be in a po­si­tion where we can in­vest in our staff to im­prove so that they can re­tool and be­come versed in the ser­vices know that we have to pro­vide.

“We have to be bet­ter able to com­pen­sate them. We can­not do that un­der the gov­ern­ment mod­el be­cause at the end of the day, we have to, or we are with­in the con­fines of the pub­lic ser­vice gov­er­nance struc­ture and the pub­lic ser­vice salary scale,”Longsworth added. (CMC)