The new Value-Added Tax Bill 2014 has eliminated the establishment of a revenue court to prosecute Value-Added Tax (VAT) evaders and other tax evaders.
Minister of State for Finance Michael Halkitis confirmed that tax evaders will be prosecuted in the magistrates' courts and the Supreme Court.
The revenue court was intended to fast-track prosecutions for tax evasion.
Under the 2013 draft of the bill, the VAT commissioner would have made application to the revenue court to forcibly close one or more businesses that failed to comply with the VAT law, among other things.
Halkitis said that "experience in the region has shown compliance in the 80 to 90 percent range".
When asked about the current backlog of cases in the court system, Halkitis said the government is about to open 10 new criminal courts "very soon".
Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson had said the revenue court would likely be a part of the magistrates' court system and that police prosecutors were expected to try the matters.
Also absent from the new bill is the Central Revenue Agency (CRA), which was to help administer VAT.
Those responsibilities are now under the Value-Added Tax Department, headed by a comptroller, rather than a commissioner.
Halkitis said the CRA will still be established.
"We are currently reforming the real property tax and business license departments," he said.
"We want to complete those reforms and introduce VAT and then bring them all together under the CRA. So we will be bringing all of these together over the course of 2015 and have it all completed within 12 to 18 months."
The new bill retains many of the penalties and fines for non-compliance contained in the draft 2013 version, albeit with stiffer penalties.
The Value-Added Tax Department wil be able to demand the details of assets from banks, garnish money owed to registrants by others and restrict access to travel for those who owe outstanding taxes.
The new bill also maintains the publishing of names of VAT defaulters.
The comptroller may publish in the newspaper the names of people who fail to file VAT returns, fail to pay VAT or contravene any provision of the new law.
Halkitis tabled the new bill on Wednesday.
VAT will be introduced on January 1, 2015 at a rate of 7.5 percent.

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