The New York Times: Venezuela's Tax Agency to Claim Back Taxes: “The Seniat has also ordered a court injunction against Shell, Europe's second-largest oil company, on $130 million in assets as collateral for taxes it says the firm owes.”: Posted 18 October 2005

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 17, 2005

Filed at 10:05 p.m. ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela's tax agency is preparing to claim back taxes from four more private oil companies with plans to expand that claim to all firms pumping crude under contract, including large foreign producers.

''We have given (tax) claims to three companies, but seven of them are now informed about this initiative ... We're going to look at all of them,'' Jose Vielma Mora, head of the Seniat tax agency, told reporters.

Seniat has already sent tax claims totaling $240 million to Italian oil company ENI SpA, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and the U.S. firm Harvest Natural Resources Inc. as part of an industrywide tax audit. All three have contested the bills, though Harvest has paid a part of the amount owed.

Mora did not say which companies would be targeted next.

Chevron Corp., of San Ramon, Calif., France's Total and London-based BP are among the 22 private oil firms that hold 32 oil pumping agreements in Venezuela.

The Seniat has said that those companies together owe $3 billion in unpaid taxes that it intends to collect.

Venezuela's government in April hiked taxes on operating agreements to 50 percent from 34 percent, saying the lower rate set when the contracts were awarded in the 1990s violated national laws. It has retroactively applied the new rate to 2001 and is seeking to collect the difference.

Earlier this year, authorities seized tax-related documents from the Maracaibo offices of Chevron.

The Seniat has also ordered a court injunction against Shell, Europe's second-largest oil company, on $130 million in assets as collateral for taxes it says the firm owes.

The tax chief noted that companies will have the opportunity to pay what they owe with payment plans over a period of time. The government has also required all operating contracts to be switched to state-controlled joint ventures by the end of the year in which PDVSA may take as much as an 80 percent stake. But it is requiring companies to pay their tax claims before making the change.

Click here to return to ShellNews.net HOME PAGE