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AGO: Delinquent taxpayers will face charges
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Posted on Jan 20 2005
With the end of the 120-day tax amnesty period Wednesday, the Attorney General’s Office said it would press criminal charges against taxpayers who remain delinquent, including those whose unpaid taxes reach hundreds of thousand of dollars.
During the early stage of the amnesty period, the AGO disclosed nearly completing investigations on four major cases, the subjects of which were among the CNMI’s top 15 delinquent taxpayers.
CNMI chief prosecutor David Hutton said his office might proceed with filing criminal charges against those four taxpayers if they did not take advantage of the amnesty period to settle unpaid taxes with waived interests and charges.
Hutton said he would look into the matter next week. He refused to divulge the identities of the four pending the completion of the investigation and his verification if taxes were settled during the amnesty period. He said each of the four owed the CNMI government over $100,000 before the amnesty period ended.
“Although these will be prosecuted by the AGO’s criminal division, the cases begin with the civil division under attorney general Pamela Brown’s new initiatives when she took office,” Hutton added.
Finance and Customs officials, however, noted the high turnout of delinquent taxpayers settling their debts during the amnesty period, with Finance Secretary Fermin Atalig expressing optimism that the government would reach its target collection of $2.1 million for the amnesty program.
Customs director Jay Santos also projected that tax collections this January would exceed the $6.41 million collected last December, as delinquent taxpayers beat Wednesday’s deadline to avail of the government’s tax amnesty program.
In signing the tax amnesty measure into law, Gov. Juan N. Babauta stressed that he would not support similar measures in the future.
