The National Revenue Authority (NRA) is launching a novel protection scheme to prevent consumers from being wrongly charged when purchasing Goods and Services following the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on 1st January this year.

It involves a receipts Lottery

The GST Law requires GST-registered businesses to issue receipt whenever they make sales of Goods or Services that are liable to GST

Each receipt must show the following:

· Names and address of Business
· Taxpayer identification number (TIN) of the business
· Date of the transaction
· Description of the Goods or Services Supplied and
· The selling price

Where the selling price included GST, this must be stated on the receipt, otherwise the amount of GST must be shown separately.

The NRA is asking members of the public to send sample copies of GST receipts they are giving to the NRA taxpayers services Unit and Gladvic House, Wellington Street, Freetown. This will assist the NRA to ensure that GST is being properly applied, that the consumers are not cheated and that the tax is being charged only by businesses that are registered for GST. Non- registered businesses are not allowed to charge GST.

Where discrepancies are revealed, the NRA will be able to take action to protect the consumer and the revenue.

To encourage consumers to send in their receipts, each month the NRA will hold a raffle of the tickets that are submitted. Each receipt will be a raffle ticket in a draw and the winning ticket/ receipt will entitle to entrant prizes as follows:

First Prize Le 10,000,000
Second Prize Le 5,000,000
Third and Fourth Prizes 2,000,000 respectively
Six runners up prizes of Le 1,000,000

To qualify for the draw, consumers must write their name and contact details on the reverse of the invoice