And our next stories are continuing the public education tonight on the upcoming GST days set aside for this coming weekend, and the weekend after. They promise to be the biggest shopping days of the year and that's because Government is waiving the 12.5% GST on local retail sales of ALL standard-rated goods. So, that means you can buy anything - curtains, a television, even a mennonite house - or a hundred bags of cement - and not pay the 12.5% tax.
But, as we told you last night - we've gotten reports that some stores - including Chinese stores say they won' open on those busy shopping days - just to avoid the headache of tweaking their cashier systems.
The GST office has heard it too. We learned that from an informational session on the "GST Christmas Waiver," facilitated by the Belize Tax Service Department mostly for the business sector. It was held via zoom and here's what the deputy said about those businesses who don't want to open for the waiver days:
Vilma Broaster, Belize Tax Service
"What is being done to encourage all businesses to participate, some business plan to close on those days. Okay. This one is a little bit tricky. The thing is that all businesses, because there's an SI that speaks to the fact that the goods will be exempt."
"So there's no way getting around that. Persons operating a business and registered for a GST must implement these for those days, for all the affected days. If they are selling ham and imported turkey, they will have to implement these."
"If a business plans to close on those days, I am not too sure what we can do with a person who choose to close their business. It is that they will be losing sales because the amount of persons that we envision will be out there to try and purchase on these three days will be a large amount of persons."
"So if they choose not to take their share for those days, that's their prerogative."
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