Taxes and Employee Benefits Department
Notice to Clients and Friends
The Puerto Rico Treasury Department (“PRTD”) is implementing a new digital system known as the Unified System of Internal Revenue (by its Spanish acronym “SURI”). SURI will combine: PRITAS, the income tax and sales and use tax (“SUT”) platform; REFO, used for individual taxpayers’ tax returns; and, PICO, the Integrated Merchant’s Web Application for the preparation, filing and payment of the Declaration of Import for Use, Use Tax on Imports Monthly Return, and SUT Monthly Return. Accordingly, SURI will facilitate Merchant’s Registration Certificate transactions, the filing of tax and informative returns, amendments to tax and informative returns, SUT payments, the receipt of alerts and notifications, among others. SURI, once fully implemented, should unify all of the PRTD’s tax systems.
Implementation Phase 2 of SURI should occur on December 2017 to integrate transactions related to corporations, pass-through entities, incentives, and excise taxes. Implementation Phase 3 of SURI should occur on December 2018 to include transactions related to individual taxpayers, withholdings, estates, and donations.
Suggestions/Recommendations
Considering that the previous software (e.g. PICO) will not be available after October, we suggest that all returns and any other relevant information saved in such software should be downloaded and saved for a period of at least 10 years. Additionally, merchants and taxpayers should be on alert for an email from the PRTD towards the end of October granting access to SURI and including further instructions regarding SURI.