Mauritius ranked 5th for ease of paying taxes
GIS – 25 October, 2019: Mauritius bagged the 5th position in the Ease of Paying Taxes Index of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report 2020. Mauritius was previously ranked at the 6th position.
The Director-General of the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA), Mr Sudhamo Lal, made this announcement, yesterday, during the Taxpayer Satisfaction Survey (TSS) Draw 2019 held in Port-Louis. The draw was carried out in the presence of Gambling Regulatory Authority representatives. The winners are as follows: 1st Prize Winner – Law Hong Waye; 2nd Prize Winner – Bissessur Kaviraj; and, 3rd Prize Winner – Lesourd Melanie.
In his address on the occasion, the Director-General underlined that the MRA is reputed to be the best Tax administration in Africa and is ahead of various countries including Canada, France, South Africa and Finland. He indicated that in order to gauge taxpayers’ perception of the services of the MRA, the TSS has been launched to gather valuable insights from its main stakeholders during the Income Tax e-Filing season.
The TSS, said Mr Lal, is an important channel to receive valuable feedback from the taxpayers and considerably helps the MRA in its commitment to improve the quality of services offered to taxpayers. Around 21,600 respondents participated in the TSS and 85 % rated the overall service delivery over the last five years as good/very good, while 80% had an overall trust in the organization, he underlined.
While 84% and 94% of taxpayers gave a Good/Very Good rating for refund of income tax and e-filing facilities respectively, some 4% of the respondents considered that the MRA did not administer the tax system with fairness.
As regards the Income Tax season 2019, the Director-General indicated that some 185,612 income tax returns were returned electronically in 2019 compared to 177,134 last year. About 54, 000 persons were refunded in excess of Rs 300 million.
