P&R asked to provide backlog data on unpaid tax

Deputy Mark Heylar has asked the Policy & Resources Committee to answer 13 questions on tax revenue

Guernsey's top political committee has been asked to provide information on tax backlogs dating back to 2017.

Deputy Mark Helyar requested that the Policy and Resources Committee (P&R) provided an estimate of the amount of taxes due and the number of tax returns that remained unprocessed.

He said fixing the tax return backlog at a time when the government had decided to draw up plans to introduce a goods and services tax (GST) from 2027 could raise up to an estimated £300m.

The questions submitted under the Rule 14 procedure means P&R has 14 days to provide an answer.

'Ask people to pay'

"If you are running a business and you've got a lot of people that owe you money and you're a bit strapped for cash, one of the first things you do is ask people to pay you," said Helyar.

"We know the ETI, which is what an employer automatically pays on behalf of an employee, accounts for about 70% of tax.

"The other 30%, how much of that is getting collected and how quickly?"

Helyar, who is the former treasury lead for the States, said the money "would be extremely helpful" and "we need to be collecting it".

'Isn't catching up'

The government said the the tax return backlog "has been around for many years and was exacerbated by the changes to normal working life caused by the Covid-19 pandemic".

It added a number of changes had been made to help reduce the backlog, which included "encouraging more people to file online, holding drop-in sessions, and amending the paper tax form so that it can be processed more efficiently".

Helyar said the States had years of outstanding backlog and the revenue service "isn't catching up".

"What is P&R doing about holding that particular part of the civil service to account for performing properly?

"We have an expectation it will be done quickly and it simply isn't."

He added that people have raised concerns about how the government will manage to collect its planned GST.

'Perfectly legitimate question'

"People are asking the question, if we can't collect what we are supposed to be paying at the moment, how are we going to organise a new system?

"It's a perfectly legitimate question and I think it's one which P&R should answer.

"We need to catch up and we need to do something much more radical.

"Really I think we should be outsourcing this and we should have other people inputting the data."

Helyar's full list of questions will be made available on the States' Rule 14 website.