The Puerto Rico Treasury Department is currently working on a number of enforcement and automation initiatives to increase the island’s sales and use tax uptake from the current 68 percent while attacking the government’s fiscal shortfall, agency Secretary Melba Acosta told participants of the Puerto Rico Credit Conference Friday.
Puerto Rico individual and corporate taxpayers who have a sales and use tax (known as IVU for its initials in Spanish) debt with the Treasury Department will be able to pay without penalty through a tax amnesty good through June 30. The agency expects to collect $8 million through the initiative, Treasury officials said Monday.
Puerto Rico Treasury Department officials told lawmakers Friday that collections stemming from the proposed increase in the excise tax on cigarettes and tobacco should go in their entirety to the General Fund and not distributed for other purposes, as proposed by the three measures under consideration by the Legislature.