GRA widens net on vehicle importers after ‘fully electric’ car tax scam bust

Last Updated on Saturday, 27 December 2025, 16:12 by Writer

The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is investigating all vehicle importers to ascertain the extent of a racket in which vehicles were signed off as “fully electric” or of lower cubic centimetres (CC) in order to pay little or no taxes, a senior tax agency official disclosed.

The GRA official said so far that agency has recovered more than GY$200 million in taxes from vehicle importer, BM Soat Auto Sales, which continues to have cases in the magistrate’s court.

“This is but one dealer so all of them are now under scrutiny,” the GRA official told Demerara Waves Online News.

The GRA said at least seven of its own officers allegedly colluded with others to cheat the GRA of taxes by deliberately missclassifying and under-valuing vehicles.

A Guyana Public Service Union official said each of the senior and junior officers was granted GY$500,000 bail on December 24.

They are expected to return to the Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigations Department on December 29.

The senior GRA official maintains that the septet is complicit in defrauding the tax authority of possibly millions of dollars in duties by allowing the clearance of fossil fuel-powered vehicles as “fully electric”.

“The facts of the matter are that they, as a group, were responsible for and aided and abetted the misclassification, the confirmation and checking, then registering vehicles as fully electric so as to be charged no taxes, or low CCs instead of the real high end CCs when the correct classification would have resulted in hundreds of millions in taxes,” the GRA official told Demerara Waves Online on condition of anonymity.

The official said so far investigators have uncovered three fossil fuel-powered vehicles that were classified as “electric only” and dozens of others that were registered with lower CC.

The official believes there are hundreds of others that were falsely classified with a lower capacity.

Investigators, according to the source, have also found allegedly forged inspection certificates from the same dealer who is also in court for false declarations.