A.M. Costa Rica
U.S. Treasury experts have helped Costa Rican authorities to draft a bill to tax casinos.
U.S. Employees worked with the Costa Rican Ministerio de Hacienda from
July through October to come up with concepts for the tax plan. In
January three U.S. Treasury Department advisers conducted training in
gaming industry audit techniques. In addition to Costa Rican officials,
students included tax collectors from Nicaragua and the Dominican
Republic.
The Ministerio de Hacienda is expected to present the draft to the
Asamblea Legislativa to replace a measure being considered now. The
five-year-old casino proposal that is languishing in the legislature is
considered inadequate by most standards. The role of the U.S.
Department of Treasury in helping with the gaming legislation became
known as officials announced an even wider presences for U.S. tax
collecting experts. U.S. officials have conducted an extensive study of
the Hacienda collection agency known as Tributación and submitted a
20-page report in February outlining areas where improvements could be
made.
The result was that additional U.S. experts are conducting training of
Costa Rican tax employees, and the training will last the rest of the
year. Federico Carrillo Zuircher, the minister of Hacienda, and Robert
Warfield, a Treasury expert, signed an agreement this month outlining
the program.
The ability of Tributación to collect taxes has been poor historically.
One criticism of a proposed new tax plan for Costa Rica is that
officials are not collecting the taxes that they are owed now.
One reason for the involvement of U.S. advisers is to assess the tax
collecting structure here and suggest alternatives, according to the
agreement. Training is high on the priority list, too, and Costa Rican
employees will get a mid-level management skills court that was
developed by the U.S. Internal revenue Service, the U.S. tax collector,
said the agreement.
The agreement also pledges representatives of both countries to assist
the streamlining of taxpayer appeals and taxpayer complaints with the
intent to improve their effectiveness.
The U.S. experts also will study “current archaic work practices that
consume resources and inconvenience taxpayers” as well as provide
technical assistance to Tributación with tax audits, said the
agreement.
