PHILIPSBURG:--- The government of St. Maarten is making headway with the collection of fees that are owed to the government by casinos and for government lease land. This was the response given by the Minister of Finance when he was asked what procedures were put in place to ensure casinos pay their dues to the government of St. Maarten.
The Minister of Finance said that over the years casinos have not been paying their dues and as such a task force was formed to ensure all casinos pay up what they owe. Irion said some of the casino owners have been saying that they were never invoiced, as such the task force visited every casino and made sure the data was collected along with a contact person for each casino. A payment plan was put in place for all outstanding debts while these casinos were urged to remain current with their annual payments. Irion said the casinos have been escaping over the years but since the implementation of the task force government collected just over NAF500.000.00 from the casinos while about Naf1.5 million was collected from outstanding cannon fees.
Irion explained that it is expected that more of these outstanding will be paid next year, he said that over the years the government has made its budget with the predicted amount that was expected to collect but over the years these payments were not made thus leaving a hole in the budgets.
