Governor Albert Bryan announced Monday that his administration is preparing to release $25 million in tax refunds before or by the end of June.
The funding is part of the administration's fiscal year 2022 budget plan, the governor said, and the latest payout will cover tax refunds owed for the year 2020. "It will bring us closer to paying tax refunds owed to tax filers in the same year they have actually filed their returns — a first for any administration from my recollection," Mr. Bryan said.
The governor said refunding tax filers monies owed to them has been a priority of his administration. "When we first took office in 2019, the reality is the average Virgin Islander was owed refunds from our government as far back as 2016, 2015. But once we took office, we made that commitment to ensure that we paid those taxes owed," he said.
Mr. Bryan said the goal was not only to ascertain that Virgin Islanders received their refunds, "but we set out to ensure that our government would never again find itself in a position to make the tough decision about whether to refund taxpayers what was owed, or to make the government payroll."
To achieve this goal, the territory's leader said the administration first "stabilized the finances of this government by tightening our belt where we needed to the most, and used those savings not to do what would be politically popular, or what we thought was going to look good for us come this election cycle, but to do what was best for our people."
He added, "In short, we did the responsible thing: we budgeted to pay down our bills and our Virgin Islands are better today for it."
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