Jersey's Income Tax Comptroller Publishes 2008 Report

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

22 April 2009

Malcolm Campbell, Comptroller of Income Tax at Jersey’s Income Tax Office has published his end-of-year report, reviewing tax changes and proposals made during the course of 2008.

“In recent years, the Income Tax Office has faced significant challenges and has had to absorb several major new tax initiatives. 2008, and more recent years, have seen the introduction and proposal of the following tax initiatives:

• The Goods and Services Tax (GST);
• The 0/10% corporate tax regime and related provisions;
• The abolition of tax allowances for those on higher incomes (20% means 20%);
• The introduction of Retirement Annuity Trusts;
• The European Union Savings Directive (EUSD) Bilateral Agreements with 27 EU countries;
• Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEA) – currently with 13 countries;
• The Non Resident Landlord Scheme;
• The Land Transaction Tax.”

“The broadening of the tax base, through a Goods and Services Tax (GST), has now been successfully introduced. The full operational requirements of the introduction of GST are a touch uncertain. However, a Post Implementation Review has been undertaken, with a recommendation for 14 changes. Nevertheless, it has, overall, given a very positive result for the implementation of GST.”

“We have collected over GBP536m in tax through assessing and collecting from over 109,000 personal and corporate taxpayers - and our new GST.”

“In the last few years, we have also had to handle an international dimension to our work, with the EUSD and an increasing number of TIEA’s. The latter, in particular, is likely to develop into a major work stream. Several meetings have already taken place with the USA Tax Attaché and the Netherlands Competent Authority. An introductory meeting is already scheduled with the United Kingdom Competent Authority. Many more such meetings are likely in the future when all current and future TIEAs with countries worldwide become ‘live’ and operational.”

Outlining successes during 2009, Campbell continued:

“This report shows that, once again, we have all risen to the challenges, policies and objectives assigned to the Income Tax Office by the Treasury and Resources Minister. We have continued to provide a high quality service to all customers, whether they are taxpayers, professional, politicians and officers in other States departments.”

“We have achieved extremely successful results during 2008 through the commitment of the Income Tax Office staff. I am extremely proud and grateful for all their hard work and dedication over the past year and thank each and every one of them.” Campbell noted in particular, positive comments received in the annual anonymous customer feedback questionnaire.

“Looking forward, we now have to ensure, with the sudden deterioration in economic circumstances in the last few months facing businesses and employees in Jersey, that we also have a robust debt management strategy in place, for GST, ITIS, corporate and personal tax, as well as concentrating all our scarce resources in ensuring the most efficient and effective procedures, processes and systems to handle our extremely busy workload. Unfortunately, what all this means is that online filing of personal Tax Returns, which was proposed when the economic climate was very much better than at present and when our scarce resources could cope with such a major new project, has had to be delayed until 2012,” concluded Campbell.

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