Search on for new staff Audit Team St. Maarten

THE HAGUE–A recruitment drive is currently taking place in the Netherlands to staff the Audit Team St. Maarten (ATS) with young St. Maarten professionals who will assist in the process of collecting social premiums on the island. Compliance has been low and since Hurricane Irma revenues have plummeted.

The ATS office in St. Maarten, which works for the Social and Health Insurances SZV, is currently manned by 12 persons from Curaçao: nine compliance officers and three auditors. That has to change, according to ATS Interim Director Sherwin Casper, who is also the Director of the Tax Accountants Bureau BAB in Curaçao.

“The idea is that the ATS is ultimately fully run by people from St. Maarten,” said Casper, who together with HR+ Director Mistica Lauffer, also from Curaçao, is in the Netherlands to recruit St. Maarteners living here. The goal is to recruit six young St. Maarten professionals at this time. This is the first recruitment drive of this kind.

The ATS was established in 2016 to assist the SZV with compliance and collection of social premiums. Up to 2010, this task was carried out by the BAB. After 2010, the BAB kept doing incidental work in St. Maarten on a hired basis to carry out audits.

However, with a lack of continued inspections, the collection of social premiums started to become a problem for the SZV. By law, the ATS is only authorised to work for the SZV. The organisation does not have the legal authorisation to carry out tax audits and inspections. The ATS would like to see a broadening of its scope of work, but this will require a change of law which so far has not materialised.

The deployment of the ATS so far, and of the BAB in the past, has shown that inspections and audits yield positive results and that compliance increases. This compliance is important for the SZV because it needs funds to carry out its tasks. The reorganisation at the SZV and the extra effort by its personnel have also aided in increasing the revenues.
St. Maarten has about 5,900 registered companies, of which some 3,000 were active, according to figures before Hurricane Irma. Inspections have shown that about one third of these companies are fully compliant in paying social premiums.

Revenues from social premiums plummeted after the hurricane, but are currently improving somewhat. The new ATS employees that Casper and Lauffer aim to recruit in the Netherlands should help bring the revenues up to level again.

Compliance officers and auditors are not easy to come by, as the job requires broad knowledge of fiscal law and accountancy. The ATS is offering young professionals from St. Maarten with a financial background the opportunity to both study and work at the same time. Training will be provided on-island in cooperation with the University of Tilburg.
Incentives will be offered to the new recruits, including a paid education with a job guarantee, while the cost of housing in St. Maarten and moving back to the island will be covered as well. The ATS tried to recruit personnel in St. Maarten late 2016, but this didn’t yield sufficient results. An information briefing was held in the Netherlands earlier this week and the last session will be at the Cabinet of the St. Maarten Minister Plenipotentiary in The Hague this Friday.

The Cabinet of the Minister Plenipotentiary is providing logistical assistance to recruit new personnel for the ATS, as is the Foundation for Dutch Caribbean persons in the Netherlands Ocan. The Cabinet and Ocan have a broad network in the Netherlands which is useful to establish contact with potential candidates.

An informative gathering was held at the Cabinet of the Minister Plenipotentiary on Wednesday with grassroots organisations to help mobilise candidates. Representatives of the Unified St. Maarten Connection (USC), Ocan and other interested persons attended the session.

The Cabinet of the Minister Plenipotentiary is seeking a more active role in the mobilisation of St. Maarteners who are interested in returning to their island to work there. The Cabinet is also welcoming interns. A good example is Néapthalie Louis, a student of International Business Studies at the HAN Hogeschool in Arnhem, who is doing a short internship at the Cabinet this week.

Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/75586-search-on-for-new-staff-audit-team-st-maarten

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