Fiji Revenue and Customs Service chief executive, Visvanath Das says there is an evident taxpaying culture of dishonesty.

He adds there are many cases where Fijians make fraudulent claims for value added tax refunds in addition to making no actual VAT payments.

To counter this, the tax-man says improved technology is a key avenue that they’ve adopted in consultation with the government.

“The VAT monitoring system that we have introduced now, gradually the idea is that again, right at the point of transaction, the determination is already made whether there is VAT claimable or not claimable. So when you leave to manual invoices, there’s room for manipulation, so where it is been legitimate, we have been facilitating all the refunds but I think you know people even raise issues about VAT refunds, they choose not to disclose that these are the situations, I have claimed VAT on something that did not have VAT, I have fraudulently manipulated the figure. You know these are the things people have been doing with VAT.”

Das highlighted the issue before the Public Accounts Committee who are currently scrutinizing the Revenue and Customs audit report on the management of the duty concession scheme.