The_Open_Door_deel1

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category revenue collection must be described as poor. Despite
a recent increase in rates (1977), tax collection can be
generally described as low. Only in some cases this is legalized
by (concession) agreements. The lack of trained clerical staff
to examine the tax returns of those companies which for some
reason have not escaped the filing of their tax returns
continues to deprive the Government of a substantial amount.
A recent attempt to enforce payments by tax payers in this
category failed- When the number of trained civil servants
employed in the Income Tax Division of the Ministry of Finance
was increased, the companies-taxpayers responded by filing their
tax returns in the outstations rather than in Monrovia (57).
As the law prescribes that income tax returns must be filed at
the nearest revenue office these practices were legal but the
Government failed to react promptly and adequately to this
problem (which seems to be of an administrative nature rather
than a legal impossibility)'
Also in the sub-category of Individual Income Taxes a narrow
tax base forms one of the major characteristics as well as a
limiting factor for increased revenue collection. Non-compliance
with existing tax laws and large-scale evasion of taxes by
mainly Liberian citizens are among the main causes of this
phenomenon which is further explained by the level of economic
development of the country and the subsequent small group of
wage earners there. The statutory exemption from income taxes
of the first I 1,500 a year also accounts for the small number
of income tax payers in the country.
At the end of the 1960 's, on the initiative of the Secretary to
the Treasury, J. Milton Weeks, two U.S. missions examined
Liberia's tax performance. The first, a tax policy mission,
headed by Professor Carl Shoup of Colombia University (U.S.A.),
completed its survey in September 1969- The second mission
surveyed Liberia's Tax Administration and also made
recommendations for improvements. It was conducted by the
Foreign Tax Assistance Staff of the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service and was completed in March 1970- Both missions were
financed by the Liberian Government. The ultimate fate of the
reports submitted by foreign missions to Liberia is a dusty
shelf somewhere in an office of a Ministry in Monrovia, or in
someone's desk, where they may stay for years, forgotten,
sometimes even unread, and in most cases not implemented.
As no improvements are introduced occasionally a newly appointed
Minister may order a similar study to be carried out without
realising that this will duplicate the first mission's work.
The second mission subsequently arrives at the same conclusion
as its predecessor but its report is destined for the same fate.
The two tax reports already mentioned are no exceptions to this
general rule. In 1978 the author personally discovered in one of
the rooms of the Ministry of Finance numerous unopened boxes
containing hundreds of copies of the Shoup Report of 1969. The
Shoup Report, however, is unknown to most of the top officials