A joint awareness session on Section 65A of the Goods and Services Tax Act is underway at the Lae International Hotel for the Momase region.
The two-day session is facilitated by the Internal Revenue Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Finance.
Today’s session was attended by what is known as ‘authorised withholders’ – which are the provincial governments, district development authorities and provincial health authorities within Momase. The second day will be for suppliers or service providers to these provincial governments, DDAs and PHAs.
The Acting Assistant Commissioner for IRC’s tax audit division, Ranzoline Kalokalo, said Section 65A is a notice issued by the Commissioner-General for the provincial and district agencies to withhold the 10 percent Goods and Services Tax portion, and remit directly to the IRC on behalf of their suppliers.
“We had a lot of participants this morning so we had to readjust our program to have the second lot come in at 1 o’clock, unfortunately, because we couldn’t cater for them,” said Kalokalo.
“From the feedback from the participants, it has been good. I think they got the message at the district level and we are looking forward for them to go back and start enforcing Section 65A according to the requirements.
“It’s interesting and also positive, having a team from Madang and all other regions coming in to Lae. In terms of how much we’ve reached out when we did the awareness so that’s a positive indication for us.”
Kalokalo said this is a nationwide awareness covering the four regions of Highlands, Momase, New Guinea Islands then Southern on August 8th-9th.
“Whilst we’re doing the Northern region one, there’s a team in the New Guinea Islands running the same session, awareness on Section 65A.
“Last week we had that in Western Highlands Province and Eastern Highlands.
“We’ve been targeting the regions. Once we are done with the regions, hopefully, where there are requests from provinces, we’ll have to look at it.”
According to IRC’s July 7th list, there are 168 authorised withholders; they are authorised to act on behalf of the IRC and withhold or deduct the 10 percent payment of GST on their suppliers’ invoices and remit directly to the IRC.