Guam - A roundtable meeting was held today at the Guam Legislature in Hagatna to look at current statutes that assess the gross receipts tax on contractors on island and practices that are being implemented by military contractors. According to Office of Finance and Budget chairman Senator Ben Pangelinan, it is necessary that they look at the affects on the GRT and challenges it presents to the Department of Revenue & Taxation.

"There was an attempt to assist the Rev & Tax in cooperation with the Secretary of Defense on certain information and so forth with regards to these contracts," said the policymaker.  "There was a response in March by the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Installations and Environments and basically it says 'We're not going to collect your taxes for you'.  And we never really expected them to. We just wanted them to assist the department."

Officials from Rev & Tax, the Guam Chamber of Commerce, the Guam Contractors Association along with Joe Arnett from Deloitte and Touche, and Bank of Guam economist Joe Bradley all attended the meeting today.