Submissions for accommodation tax returns should be made via the BTB’s
online portal. Use of the portal is encouraged during this time of
social distancing. And in more of our conversation with Tejada, he told
us that the BTB is trying to reach a digital age in which it will be
relatively quick and easy to know hotel occupancy levels and
forthcoming hotel taxes.
Ted Tejada - President, Belize Hotel Association
“The portal is something that each hotel has to report all their hotel
guests checking into the hotels on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
What we’re trying to reach is a digital age where the country of Belize
should be able to know the occupancy of the country within the
following day…And the Belize tourism board has been working very hard
actually…To go to that level and so what we do at the end of the month
we need to go on the portal and input the information of how many
guests, how many rooms and how much revenue did the hotel actually
produce so that the government knows how much tax we need to pay the
government so, put it this way, within two days after the end of every
month BTB should know how much income in terms of taxes they should be
received by the 14th following month. So actually the portal itself is
not to collect the money because the money is already in every hotel’s
bank account all we’re doing is reporting to the government how much
tourists actually came because we still need to know, you know when
you’re doing your numbers and you’re doing your budget for next year
you need to know how was actually march actually performing before this
COVID-19.â€
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