During parliamentary debate on Suriname’s General Tax Law, Ronny Asabina, leader of the BEP political faction, has publicly called for the immediate elimination of the 1 million Surinamese dollar (SRD) annual turnover VAT threshold, arguing that the existing regulation creates widespread opportunities for tax avoidance and fosters an environment conducive to systemic corruption.
Under current Surinamese tax rules, businesses with annual turnover falling below the 1 million SRD threshold are exempt from the same strict VAT reporting and payment obligations that apply to firms exceeding the limit. Asabina told the National Assembly that this two-tier system is widely exploited by unethical business owners, who deliberately structure their operations or falsify administrative records to keep their reported turnover below the cutoff, allowing them to skip out on VAT obligations entirely. He specifically called out the supermarket sector, casting doubt on the credibility of claims that dozens of operators in the industry actually generate less than 1 million SRD in annual turnover.
Critically, Asabina rejected the common counterargument that eliminating the threshold would overburden the Suriname Tax Administration, which reportedly faces staffing shortages that would leave it unable to oversee a vastly expanded pool of VAT-registered businesses. Reports indicate tax officials have previously floated raising the threshold to reduce administrative workload, a proposal Asabina dismissed outright. If expanding oversight requires hiring additional tax personnel and investing in new infrastructure, he argues, the state must prioritize that investment. Shortages in enforcement capacity, he emphasized, are never a justifiable reason to preserve a regulation that enables widespread abuse of the tax system.
Asabina’s criticism of the VAT threshold is part of a broader push to strengthen Suriname’s tax administration and crack down on non-compliance. He argues that tax system reform must include a full review of all existing rules that create opportunities for manipulation, and is calling on the government to launch a formal review of whether full elimination of the 1 million SRD threshold is feasible. He has also pressed the government to clarify its official position: will it keep the current threshold, raise it, or move to abolish it entirely?
A core part of Asabina’s broader reform agenda is expanding the use of digital tools to track taxpayers and financial flows. Suriname has already introduced online filing and payment systems for VAT, payroll tax and income tax, but Asabina is demanding transparency around the actual outcomes of this digital shift. He wants clear data on how many taxpayers have transitioned to online filing, and whether digitalization has actually led to higher or more efficient tax collection.
He also called for improved cross-agency information sharing between the tax administration and other government bodies, arguing that integrating data from different public datasets would allow officials to identify and act on tax evasion far more quickly. Importantly, Asabina stressed that his push for stricter enforcement does not mean higher tax burdens for ordinary citizens and compliant businesses. Instead, his goal is a fairer distribution of tax obligations, and a dramatic increase in the likelihood that tax avoiders and evaders are caught and held accountable.
Asabina concluded that the new General Tax Law can help advance these goals by granting the tax administration expanded authority for oversight, data collection and enforcement. For these new powers to be effective, however, he added, the tax authority must be properly resourced with sufficient staff, digital tools and enforcement capacity. Parliamentary debate on the draft legislation is set to resume next week.