Doing Business in Jamaica: Taxation, Regulation, and Trading Issues

• Author: Lloyd G. Waller/Densil A. Williams/Omar E. Hawthorne/Donavon Johnson
• Profession: Head of the Department of Government at The University of the West Indies, Mona. His research focuses on research methodologies; governance and public policy; and digital transformation/Professor of International Business at the UWI/Lecturer of International Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Leadership and Governance at ...
• Pages: 81-94

Introduction

In this chapter, we continue to present our ndings from our qualitative

study of US businesses experiences with doing business in Jamaica. This

chapter will focus on issues such as paying taxes, enforcing contracts,

resolving business-related issues as well as trading across borders.

Paying Taxes

compliance. The data shows that Jamaica’s rank of 122 places it above the

average regional rank and distance to frontier (DTF) score.

Figure 7.1 shows the ndings from participants’ expression of their

of World Bank (2018), this study nds that it has become much easier for

entrepreneurs to pay their taxes; this, they attribute to the introduction

of online payment methods, which have reduced their need for walk-in

transactions. The Doing Business report uses a number of variables to

measure this indicator of ‘paying taxes’, one such variable in the number of

7. Doing Business in Jamaica:

Taxation, Regulation, and

Trading Issues

Figure 7.1: Paying Taxes – DBR Rank of Jamaica

Source: World Bank, 2018