A number of cases regarding fake tax officials deceiving small businesses of tax payments have surfaced.

Fiji Revenue and Customs Service Chief Executive, Visvanath Das says last week a few businesses reported of individuals pretending to be FRCS officers and asking to make tax payments.

Das says this issue came to light through the Revenue and Customs’ new tax system project which is currently being established.

He adds in order to launch the new system the FRCS is conducting a data cleansing program whereby, officials are making cross reference with personal information before digitizing them.

However, some individuals are using this initiative to cheat tax-payers.

“Now what has happened that while we have rolled out this initiative it has been misinterpreted that the tax office has gone out there trying to collect taxes from the normal mum’s and dad’s and people who are trying to make a living and that is absolutely not the case. I just want to clear the air over the fact that it is not about taxing people but about updating tax-payer record.”

Das says it’s rather unfortunate that some individuals are taking advantage of tax-payers.

He is reminding Fijians to be vigilant.