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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2024
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connectivity Realtors seek legal advice Airlift woes branded as top firms face DIR fines ‘glass half full’ By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
THE Bahamas Real Estate Association (BREA) was yesterday awaiting legal advice with several top realtors facing fines of $25,000 for not replying to a Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) “fishing” expedition. Carla Sweeting, BREA’s president, when contacted by Tribune Business confirmed that the Association was waiting on a legal opinion from its attorney after the tax authorities gave 20 leading real estate companies just 14 days to provide a multitude of details on all transactions they have been involved with going back more than five-and-a-half years. This newspaper’s contacts, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, revealed that the Department of Inland Revenue sent out e-mail notices around October 10 requesting that the selected companies supply the purchase prices for all real estate transactions they have been involved in from January 1,
• Several get $25,000 penalty on VAT demands • Inland Revenue seeks all sales data post-2018 • BREA president: Fears that other laws breached 2019, to September 2024 - a period covering five years and nine months. The notices, issued under the VAT Act’s section 62 (1), which gives the comptroller wide-ranging “investigatory powers” to demand information from anyone thought liable to pay the tax, also demanded details such as the legal description of every property transacted, including address and location; the names of all buyers and sellers; and, if those were
corporate entities, the names of the directors involved. This newspaper was also told that the tax authorities sought a list of all longCARLA SWEETING term leases, meaning those five years or longer as defined by the VAT Act, as well as the identities of the attorneys (those on the vendor side) involved in the transactions. The 14-day deadline to comply is understood to have provoked a major scramble at the 20 targeted realtors to assemble the information demanded by the tax authorities. A number requested, and were granted, an extension until yesterday to submit the required paperwork to the Department of Inland Revenue. However, Tribune Business can reveal that at least two major realtors have received formal notification
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Poor connectivity, high airfares ‘definitely big killer’ for Cat Isl. By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net CAT Island resort operators yesterday branded the lack of same-day air connectivity and high airfares as “definitely a big killer” for their growth prospects and those of the island’s tourism industry. Frank Wolfe, former owner of Shannas Cove Resort, told the Cat Island Business Outlook that long-time repeat visitors are frequently cancelling vacations to the island upon learning they will have to overnight in Nassau given that they have experienced this so many times.
“The big issue is definitely the time of the Western Air flights at 1pm,” he said. “That kills a lot of business. There’s no doubt about it and nobody can tell me any other story about that. It’s fact, an absolute fact, because we know we have people just stuck, just connecting. “We still have contacts with people coming for a long time. We become friends. They say ‘we don’t want to spend two nights in Nassau’. It’s a big killer, definitely a big killer.” Mr Wolfe said concerns over the lack of same-day air connectivity, and the disincentive this provides for persons seeking to travel to
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‘Hold them accountable’: Hotels in Airbnb rescues By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net HOTELIERS yesterday demanded that vacation rental owners be “held accountable” and pay their fair share in government taxes as several revealed how they “rescued” tourists from sub-standard properties. Resort operators, speaking at the Cat Island Business Outlook conference, voiced mixed views on the competitive threat posed by the likes or Aribnb and VRBO and whether vacation rental owners should pay a flat across-the board fee or if
Bahamians should be subject to a discounted tax. However, all agreed that Bahamian vacation rentals should be subject to tighter regulation and standards inspections. Antoine Barbier, resort manager at Cat Island’s Greenwood Beach Resort, said the property is “losing a lot of business” to the ever-expanding vacation rental market as he revealed how the resort once had to accommodate a guest at 10pm at night due to “shooting” at or near where they were staying. “Another issue is some of them are not according to the standard,” Mr Barbier
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By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net CAT Island tourism operators were yesterday urged to treat the lack of same-day air connectivity as a “glass half full” despite it being branded “a big killer” for their resorts and other businesses. Latia Duncombe, the Ministry of Tourism’s director-general, while acknowledging the disincentive caused by travellers having to spend up to two nights in Nassau when airline schedules are “not in sync”, nevertheless argued that it gave The Bahamas an opportunity to offer impacted visitors “a multidestination vacation”. She spoke out at the Cat Island Business Outlook conference after Frank Wolfe, the former owner of Shanna’s Cove resort, described the lack of sameday air connectivity as well as $1,850 round-trip air fare costs -equivalent to those charged for trans-Atlantic flights to Europe - as the
LATIA DUNCOMBE “big disadvantage” stifling the island’s tourism growth. Mr Wolfe, conceding that the carriers which currently serve the carriers, Makers Air and Western Air, are private companies and cannot be forced to change their schedules, asserted that visitors to the island often have to spend two days out of the average week-long stay on Cat Island overnighting in Nassau “whether they want to or not”. He explained that this was because domestic
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