The Mayors Council of Guam met with the Department of Rev and Tax to work out some of the details of the ALL RISE program.
During their meeting, MCOG received details from Rev & Tax about the actual requirements for the All RISE Program.
MCOG president Jesse Alig went on the air with Newstalk K57’s Patti Arroyo to discuss the meeting.
He said that residents often expect mayors to have all of the answers when it comes to government programs. But when it’s tax-related, Alig said that they have to defer to Rev and Tax.
He said one of the things they discussed with Rev and Tax Director Dafne Shimizu was the issues they’ve had processing mayor’s verifications.
“We talked a little bit about the details on what needs to get done because there are issues with certain residents as far as transferring. And so we informed Dafne about our own internal issues and what can be done so that it’s quicker for the resident and also quicker for the office staff. But bottom line, everyone still needs a verification of residency,” he said.
Alig said they also asked about the final All RISE application forms.
“The application and the guidelines will be coming shortly and once that’s released, we’ll know how to further assist as far as manually assisting residents with the forms or any online processing,” Alig said.
Another issue that was brought up during the meeting was the procedure for dropping off the applications.
Alig says that Shimuzu gave clear instructions that the application process is similar to filing a tax form.
He also discussed ways that the mayor’s offices can make things more convenient for applicants.
“Once the applications are ready, residents will complete the application, will prepare all of their attachments, and submit them directly to a DRT dropbox or online. We also talked about e-mail verifications. We can e-mail the verification to the resident and the residents can attach it to their online application or print it at their convenience and attach it to their manual submissions,” the mayor said.
Alig hopes that the e-mail process will especially work in villages that usually have longer lines.
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