Many Persons Using Online System to Pay Taxes

Project Manager for the government’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project, Richard Gordon has said that more than 850 persons have registered to use the online system for paying taxes, since the facility was put in place in December last year.
The e-payment facility, Mr. Gordon said, was designed to make it easier for persons to do business with government and “has avoided that number of people coming into the tax offices (to make payment)”. The facility allows credit card holders to pay property tax, traffic tickets, betting and gaming tax, government consumption tax and special consumption tax online.
Pointing to its success, Mr. Gordon told JIS News that more than $5 million has been collected online between December 2004 and May 2005.
The online tax facility is part of government’s electronic (e)-government project to allow persons to access its services through the Internet.
Mr. Gordon told JIS News that the initiative was further enhanced by the installation of computer terminals at the Constant Spring and King Street tax offices. As a result, persons who did not have access to computers were now able to log on and benefit from e-government services.
The Project Manager pointed out that customer service representatives have been trained to assist “walk-in” customers who have credit cards to use the terminals at the tax offices and set up their accounts in order to make payment.
“In tracking the use of e-government system over the last few months, we have seen a marked change in the take-up and sign-up of new users since we have put that initiative in place at the tax offices,” Mr. Gordon noted.
He said that the next phase would allow National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and National Housing Trust (NHT) payments to be done online. “Both individual and corporate clients can make their returns to the government online without having to go and do paper transactions,” he said.
Commenting on the safety of online transaction, Mr. Gordon assured that “the use of your information is only to do the payment. Once you enter the information for your credit card and the transaction is complete, that information is not stored anywhere”.
“The only information that we would keep is how much you pay and what you are paying for,” Mr. Gordon said.