{"id":310123,"date":"2019-10-16T06:06:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T20:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=310123"},"modified":"2019-10-16T06:06:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T20:06:32","slug":"finance-still-owes-mva-5-3m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/finance-still-owes-mva-5-3m\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance still owes MVA $5.3M"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_310128\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310128\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MVA-pix.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/MVA-pix.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-310128\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310128\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marianas Visitors Authority board chair Marian Aldan-Pierce presides over a board meeting yesterday at MVA\u2019s conference room in Oleai\/San Jose. During the meeting, acting MVA managing director Judy C. Torres disclosed that the Department of Finance remitted to the MVA $1.5 million in hotel occupancy tax collection last month, but that $5.3 million remains pending.<br \/>(FERDIE DE LA TORRE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Department of Finance turned over $1.5 million in hotel occupancy tax collections to the Marianas Visitors Authority last September but, according to MVA acting managing director Judy C. Torres, this is only a partial amount.<\/p>\n<p>In her status report on the hotel occupancy tax receivables at the MVA board meeting yesterday, Torres said the $1.5 million means that Finance is only current with the hotel occupancy tax collection remittance up to March.<\/p>\n<p>To date, Torres said, MVA has gotten a total of about $5.8 million from Finance. About $5.3 million remains pending or has yet to be turned over to MVA, she added.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to vendor payables for MVA offshore offices, she said MVA has fully paid June and July 2019 invoices and made 50% payment for the August invoices. <\/p>\n<p>For the MVA Korea offshore office, Torres said that MVA has fully paid the August 2019 invoices.<\/p>\n<p>Torres said they have processed payments for local and other vendors with invoices that are 60 days and over past due.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo that\u2019s our current status as of September,\u201d said Torres, adding that they have collected all the receivables for fiscal year 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Last Aug. 1, MVA managing director Priscilla M. Iakopo disclosed that they received a total of $1.3 million from Finance.<\/p>\n<p>Iakopo said, however, that, as of June 2019, Finance still owes MVA $4.7 million in hotel occupancy tax.<\/p>\n<p>Last July, Rep. Joseph \u201cLee Pan\u201d T. Guerrero (R-Saipan) urged Finance to transmit the $5.1 million that it owes MVA in hotel occupancy tax collection, saying Finance is technically violating the law when it fails to remit the collection. <\/p>\n<p>Guerrero, who chairs the House Committee on Commerce and Tourism, pointed out that, under the law, 80% of the hotel occupancy tax collection goes to MVA, while the remaining 20% goes to the Retirement Settlement Fund. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Finance turned over $1.5 million in hotel occupancy tax collections to the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-310123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-mva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}