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It all started with a an undercover visit from Belize Tax Services in Placencia in April,

Omar Sierra, Owner, Omar's Restaurant
"And they basically came in undercover basically a male and a female and then they ordered a drink or two."

And now four months later as many 20 different business owners on the Peninsula are left with thousands of dollars in fines-the minimum being $2,500.

Back in May they were given citation notices of all the sales tax infractions found within their business operations. They acted quickly to correct the infractions before the tax services personnel circled back for another round of compliance checks.

But they never returned, and instead sent an officer to deliver fines to the businesses. Business owners like Lyra Spang says she complied the first time around.

Lyra Spang, Owner, Taste Belize Tours
"They told my office manager that they would be in touch by email to follow up and that they were here to help us with compliance and they gave us a paper that had three violations on it that they wanted us to fix so we didn't have a POS system at the time we didn't have the GST certificate on the wall and we had issued a receipt for a small item one of the products that we sell in the shop a pack of Chia seeds we had not issued a tax receipt for that because it was paid in cash and we never wrote out a receipt for it so those were our three violations."

Spang says that after they took the steps to correct these violations, they were unable to follow up with Tax Services:

Lyra Spang, Owner, Taste Belize Tours
"They never came back, it's only now on Monday the 12th of August an official came and started handing out fines so he came here and gave us an envelope and in that was a paper stating that we had a 5K fine for those three violations but we had already immediately complied and fixed the violations so we were shocked because how the tax managers had spoken to my office manager and to myself they have the strong impression they were going to follow up well they stated clearly they were going to email us to follow up and they said they are there to help us."

For Omar Sierra who's been running his parent's restaurant, "Omar's" that opened in 1992, he was slapped 5k in fines despite also correcting the deficiencies that were pointed out after the first visit.

Omar Sierra, Owner, Omar's Restaurant
"To cut a long story short they are known to me that I had three violations which was failure to produce the proper receipt with the tax ID number and all of that and then the next thing was failure to display my certificate for the tax department and also failure to have a POS system or a cash register."

"So that's 32 years of being in business paying our taxes on time every month and this the first time we have been fined to that exorbitant amount of money and to add to in the off season in the slow season of all times."

Reporter
"How does this impact your business? I mean like $5,000 is like that's not easy to come up on."

Omar Sierra, Owner, Omar's Restaurant
"As you can see we are closed. I only open sometime like 1pm or sometimes 2:30 depending on how business is the previous days. I gauge it from that."

"I just have to hope that business get a little better, so that I could put the funds together."

With Placencia still in its slow season these businesses are now faced with the challenge of not only having to survive but also find the money to pay these fines. Members of the village chapter of the Belize Tourism Industry Association say that they plan to write a group appeal. These two businesses have already written their own:

Omar Sierra, Owner, Omar's Restaurant
"I spoke to two of my colleagues in the business one not in the tourism industry and one in the tourism industry and both of them are surprised, shocked angry to be honest some of them the two others that u know if were charged way more than me one of them was twice my charge and one a couple thousand more than I was charged. And I mean honestly my point of view I think you are not asking me for a message but my message to the Belize tax services is stop treating us like just like a statistic in your system just like another number we are hard working people we have families we support our families from businesses like this and it's not a big business these are small businesses we pay our taxes on time every month and I just need for the people sitting behind their computers in the tax department to just reflect on what they are doing here with us and especially in a time like slow season."

Lyra Spang, Owner, Taste Belize Tours
"A five thousand dollar fine in slow season is not a help and we have complied so we are really frustrated and surprised because it's not only us it's dozens of businesses in the village and these small businesses are the backbone of the economy and of the tourism sector so it is just the wrong way to do it we should have been given a chance to comply and we did so immediately."

"And we are hopeful that the director general understands that perhaps this is not the best way to go about it and they can see that these businesses are an important tax base and that if putting them out of business with such large fines maybe it is not the best way to move forward."