Group photo.
WILLEMSTAD--Representatives of the Tax Authorities of Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten, and for Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius (so-called BES islands) recently met for knowledge exchange in a work seminar. This was a joint event of the Temporary Work Organisation (TWO) and the Caribbean Netherlands Tax Authorities BCN, reported the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations BZK.
The goal was to share progress, successes and bottlenecks in the developments of tax authorities and to stimulate cooperation. Participants also had the opportunity to get to know each other personally.
Proceedings were opened by BCN director Claudia Toet. “We are looking forward to getting to know each other. What do we need and where can we strengthen each other? We have the same citizens and companies in our database, so we need each other,” she said.
Arjen Alberts, project leader regarding tax reform in the “country packages” of reforms for Curaçao and St. Maarten within TWO explained: “With this we are implementing part of the country packages. We want to give new life to collaboration and get to know each other again.”
Each country had the opportunity to give a presentation of the developments and needs of its tax authorities.
The Tax Authorities of Curaçao are in a flux. Several improvements have already been carried out and more developments are planned in the coming years.
Various tools are used so that employees can focus more on substantive issues instead of administrative matters. The projects that have been carried out are aimed at preventing errors, increasing effectiveness and realising structural improvements.
Aruba was able to show how they have digitised declarations and payments, among other things. Plans for the coming years were also discussed, as were challenges that digitisation brings, such as data security and accessibility of organisations to better meet customer needs.
Preparations have been made in St. Maarten since 2022 to modernise the outdated information technology (IT) infrastructure. The Tax Authorities are also struggling with understaffing. The country package pays a lot of attention to this and makes the necessary resources available to reform the Tax Authorities and improve services to customers.
BCN (BES) has taken a completely new path since 10-10-10. This includes tax legislation, administrative responsibility and new classification.
Over the past 13 years, the department has been continuously developing, organisationally, technologically and in terms of service delivery. They went from a lot of paper to almost completely digital, revenues have increased and processes have been better streamlined.
The presentations made clear how many similarities there are in the challenges, including the digitisation and security of systems, the recruitment of suitable manpower and the exchange of lessons learned. The first steps were taken on site to seek each other out through, among other things, department meetings, training opportunities and exchange of experiences to strengthen each other, stated a release.
TWO said it looks back with great satisfaction on this first work seminar of the Tax Authorities and continues to support the modernisation of the Tax Authorities of Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten through their country packages.
