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Under construction
This section is under construction and therefore its content could be incomplete. We apologize for any inconvenient this may cause.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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The following questions are frequently asked by taxpayers accessing this site:
- What is e-filing?
- How will taxpayers access the web based facilities?
- What does the term "Tax Agent" mean?
- What about supporting documents for returns? Will I still have to send them on paper?
- Will I still be able to file returns on paper?
- Will I be able to pay my obligations online?
- What is the deadline for third parties to submit information to the IRD?
- What happens if I am not sure about all the information in my return when I already started filing it online? Will I have to lose my work?
- What is a XML File?
- What is XML Schema?
If you have a question you that has not been included in this list please feel free to Contact us and we will include it.
E-filing is the short form term to represent electronic filing. In the context of tax administration, e-filing is the submission of tax data to a taxing authority, in a computer readable format.
With respect to Barbados and the Inland Revenue Department, e-filing pertains to the submission to the IRD of income tax returns (examples such as individual income tax, corporation income tax and reverse tax credit returns) and information returns (such as employers’ annual submission of statements of employee remuneration and deductions) in electronic format via the internet.
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In order to ensure that access to the web-based facilities is secure, taxpayers will be given a unique user identification number and password. This process will certify that their access is secure and that their information will remain confidential. Detailed instructions for this step will be provided soon.
Taxpayers will access the IRD's web site (https://etax.ird.gov.bb) and input their unique user identification number and password to gain access to the web-based system. Taxpayers will first have to register themselves. This document (Self Registration Manual) will assist in that process. Once taxpayers are logged onto the system, they will view a menu with a number of options (services) available to them. Taxpayers will be able to select the options they wish to use and will be presented with "easy to follow steps" to record their information and complete their transactions.
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There will be "on-line help" to guide taxpayers while using the on-line facilities. After a taxpayer has completed his/her actions, a record of the data will be archived and the taxpayer will log themselves out of the system.
A tax agent is an authorized third party who must be registered with the IRD to act on taxpayer behalf.
- Individuals can be represented by another individual, an independent accountant or an audit firm properly registered in the IRD.
- Corporations and other entities can be represented by one or more individuals, accountants, or audit firms. For instance, a corporation may have their own accountants or directors acting on its behalf and also an independent accountant or audit firm could be authorized to represent it.
Inherent with e-filing of income tax returns, which is a key element in the new tax administration system, is the elimination of any requirement for taxpayers to affix paper supporting documents to their income tax returns, even if theses returns are filed on paper. Instead, the IRD will be obtaining information such as statements of remuneration paid and tax deducted statements of residential mortgage interest paid, home insurance premiums paid, shares purchased in public companies and a myriad of other information from entities (third parties) that have this information on their files. The IRD will load this information onto its data bases and associate the information with individual income tax returns via the NRN. However, taxpayers will be required to retain all supporting documents and make these documents available to the IRD if requested to do so.
For those taxpayers who do not wish to utilize the web based or electronic facilities, the traditional paper filing processes will remain available.
Currently this service is not available. This particular matter is planned for further stages of the Tax Administration Modernization Project.
The deadline is February 28th annually.
When you use the online services, the system will allow you to create drafts of your returns or documents whenever you want. With this mechanism, you can come back later and finish your work if you had to stop it earlier. The information is only taken as final when you say so.
A XML file is an electronic file written in The Extensible Markup Language XML) and normally identified by the extension .xml. XML is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own elements. Its primary purpose is to help information systems share structured data, particularly via the Internet, and it is used both to encode documents and to serialize data. For further information click here.
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. An XML schema provides a view of the document type at a relatively high level of abstraction. For further information click here
In simple terms, an XML Schema defines the internal structure of a given XML document. Currently XML is the most popular file type to interchange information between systems.
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