THE Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) will be returning some of its services to the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC) building which it rented for decades in order to ease space congestion at the nation’s main tax collection agency.
Commissioner General Godfrey Statia told the Guyana Chronicle that GRA has already rented two floors of the post office building and is contemplating the rehabilitation of its Smyth and Princess Street location where the Excise Licencing and Motor Vehicle Registration Office was once located.

Statia told this newspaper that services such as TIN applications and other basic services that involve “easy administration” will be relocated to that facility. He said that those services should be available to the public by June. “We should be up and running and services should be available to the public by June 1, latest.”
The GRA head said that apart from the services that will be offered, the post office location will be used for training and storage purposes. He said that the facility is already being used for training and storage, but work is ongoing to bring the building up to standard to provide the identified services.

The GRA is still looking at the benefits that will accompany the reactivation of the Princess Street Licence Revenue Office, Statia said. He suggested that the facility reopening its services is very likely, given the current limitations at the main office.
The Commissioner General said that as the Authority improves its IT capabilities, there is no reason why all of GRA’s services should be congested under one roof. He said it would be much more convenient for the public when they do business and ease parking congestion. As the period for filing tax returns closed on Monday, it was even more evident that parking has become a near impossible task during this time and even causes the backing up of traffic. Branching GRA’s services will help to address some of these difficulties at the busy Camp Street location.

Since moving to the sprawling Camp Street office, the GRA had shifted most of its services there. Some of its earlier locations included the GRA Tax Operations and Services offices located at the Guyana Post Office (GPO) and the Value Added Tax (VAT) building at Charlotte and Albert streets, along with its Princess Street office.