The Ringway Estate Branch of the Value Added Tax (VAT) Service on Wednesday recovered ¢321 million from two companies which had defaulted in the payment of VAT since the second quarter of this year. The companies, Broadband Home Limited, an Internet Service Provider and Central Hotel at North Ridge, issued cheques to defray their debts when officials from the Enforcement and Debt Management Unit of the VAT Service stormed their premises to close them down. Under the VAT Act," a company's property may be sold by the VAT Service if the company failed to pay the amount due in respect of the tax, interest penalties and the cost and charges of an incidental to the distress if they are not paid within 14 days of the distress". The Head of Enforcement and Debt Management Unit of the Ringway Branch of the VAT Service, Mrs Baaba Boateng, speaking to the Daily Graphic after a team from her outfit had sealed off the premises of Tower Complex Limited, a computer training school at Osu for owing the VAT Service ¢400 million and Data Force Company Limited, computer service providers and web site designers, also at Osu, for owing the service ¢100 million, said the exercise was an ongoing one to recover all monies owed the service by companies. According to Mrs Boateng, the VAT Service had made several efforts to get the owners of the companies whose premises were sealed to settle their indebtedness to the service but to no avail, hence the resort to closing down their premises immediately. In the presence of policemen, the Supervisor of debt management at the VAT Service, Mr Henry Sam, handed over a warrant of distress to the managers of the two companies, after which the police assisted the VAT officials to lock up the premises. Mr Sam said if the companies failed to honour their indebtedness to the service within 14 days, it reserved the right to direct its auctioneers to do a valuation of their assets to sell them to defray the amount. He explained that shutting down a company was not the desire of the service or the usual way of collecting fees from defaulters but pointed out that once the service had exhausted all efforts to reach them, including the sending of demand notices and other forms of communicating with them, it had been pushed to the wall to do so. Source: Daily Graphic