She told Amandala that the main reason for this is that the compliance of businesses has exceeded their expectation at 80%, and not because of the collection of extra GST on electricity sales before the implementation date of July 1.

She said that the Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) has assured her department that refunds of GST paid for power used before July 1 will be reimbursed in September bills. BEL had told us recently that it has already paid in the GST receipts to Government, so Castillo said that the refunds would come out of the September GST collections.

Currently, roughly 2,500 establishments are registered to collect GST, she said, and the new system requires a paper trail for businesses to claim tax credits on what they pay in GST on refundable items.

Castillo says that because businesses have this incentive, they will ensure they show this paper trail. But she admits that the system is still not flawless, as there will remain those who will try to cheat the system.

There are 18 people on staff to perform in-field audits, she told us.

Government has projected that it will collect $135 million in sales tax, says Castillo, which is a modest increase over last year?s figure of $131 million.

As we had noted in previous editions of our newspaper, some goods that were in stock before the implementation of GST have, during the transition from the Sales Tax of 9% to the GST of 10%, been carrying both taxes. We have no reports of how much more this double taxation is netting GOB in addition to the better-than-expected performance of the GST.

Castillo, who has worked in the VAT [Value Added Tax] Unit, the Sales Tax Department and now the GST Department, told us that the last time she saw this kind of performance in a consumer tax was with the VAT. She said that this was the reason that people were calling for a reduction of the rate.

It is too early to tell whether this kind of performance will continue, she cautioned, adding that if the increased performance continues, rather than reducing the rate of the GST, Government could also look at eliminating some ?nuisance? taxes or eliminating others that are harder to administrate.