Businesses have been receiving phone calls and fax messages that the National Insurance Board will not pay them for goods and services until the business proves it is compliant with its taxes with all other government agencies.

And apparently it is with immediate effect, without prior notice, even if the NIB has owed the business money for months with out paying their bill.

Bear in mind this is an agency that expects to receive your cheque for NIB contributions each month.

So just how many compliance certificates are businesses expected to obtain?

Can’t the government ministries, agencies and departments provide each other with a report showing who is past due rather than sending people up and down and wasting hours and days waiting for letters from government agencies?

One businessman was told if his company is in arrears with either tax authority NIB would pay the balance owed by them toward settling the outstanding taxes.

That aside, how can NIB utilise a businesses goods and services and then decide they are not going to pay you? NIB should be placed on a cash basis if they want to transact business as a result. It’s duplicitous on their behalf. In fact it’s more like theft to implement something like this after owing money for months.

As an aside, Bahamas Customs is now demanding a compliance certificate to pay a refund. Now think about that for a moment. A business must be compliant in order to put an entry in and Customs is sending one on a wild goose chase for other letters to prove compliance! Go figure!

A couple more points:

1. The government continues to make doing business more and more difficult for those businesses doing the right thing.
2. The Government should automatically send compliant businesses a letter of compliance rather than wasting peoples time and money chasing after unnecessary documentation.
3. Governments should have to seek payment for funds like business people do. Through the courts. To allow themselves the right to threaten to withhold payment of their past due balances and deny a similar privilege to business is yet another double standard.
4. Complaint businesses should deduct balances owed them by NIB from the contributions being paid in and let the courts decide what is right.

In addition, it is up for serious debate whether or not NIB has the legal authority to do this whether the Ministry of Finance has told them to do this or not because they are not the Ministry of Finance.