Puerto Rico Treasury processes 99% of returns filed this taxable year
The Puerto Rico Treasury Department confirmed that despite the need of more staff, close to 1.2 million income tax returns for individuals and corporations for taxable year 2020 have been processed, which represents 99% of the total returns filed.
Of that total, about 1 million have received their refunds.
“We have quickly disbursed close to $974.5 million in tax refunds. Having as a priority the technological and digital transformation of the systems has been one of the greatest successes for the agency,” said Treasury Secretary Francisco Parés-Alicea.
“This transformation has resulted in benefits for taxpayers with more accessible services and the fastest processing and disbursement of refunds in the agency’s history,” added Parés.
He explained that for this next taxable year 2021, the returns of conduit entities will be electronic, for taxable year 2022 the returns of nonprofit entities will be added and for taxable year 2023 all tax incentive forms will be electronic.
“This means that by 2023 we’ll have substantially all types of taxpayers filing electronically,” said Parés-Alicea.
Another initiative that will be implemented next year is a manager of tax credits from incentive laws. This electronic tool will allow to control, monitor, and generate reports digitally of the granting, transfer/sale and claim of credits by taxpayers in income tax forms without requiring cumbersome procedures for the taxpayer.
Regarding tax credits, even though the audits of these transactions have not shown significant findings, Parés-Alicea said the agency seeks to establish a control to avoid the audit process.
“In this way, we would avoid undue burden on taxpayers since the granting of credits already goes through a rigorous application and approval process,” he said.
