Monique Hepburn, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
PRESIDENT OF the Negril Chamber of Commerce, Wayne Cummings, is urging the government to leave no area untouched in trying to create efficiencies across the tax administration system.
"We believe that while many of the issues that face us can be found in the structure of the tax code, a more important point to be made is that of creating efficiencies across the system of government," said Mr. Cummings. "Leave no area untouched, while we try to find solutions to improving the administration of the people's business. To do this there can be no 'sacred cow'."
Mr. Cummings was speaking last week at a press conference at the Negril Gardens Beach Resort, where he led the Chamber's tax review panel in its presentation of its analysis of the recommendations of the tax policy review committee, being chaired by Joseph Mayer Matalon.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The panel addressed several recommendations made by the Matalon committee, such as its proposals concerning the social fund, general consumption tax (GCT), income tax and the property tax regime, which it regarded as difficult and oftentimes confusing. The tax review committee was especially critical of the revenue neutral mandate given to the committee by the government.
"The mandate given to the committee to simplify the tax code within the guidelines of a revenue neutral framework, in our opinion, was in effect an unfair restriction that made it difficult for a truly dispassionate and economically sound assessment to be made," said Mr. Cummings.
"In effect they were asked to move around numbers with little or no effect on the overall improvements in government's tax collection capabilities," he said.
INCREASING GCT
According to the Chamber president, the committee's proposal to increase GCT from 15-16 per cent as a balancing act for reductions in the PAYE and other taxes is "a most disturbing move that will have an immediate and lasting negative impact on the unemployed, the working poor (persons earning minimum wage) and pensioners who are on a fixed income."
However, the committee's proposal to raise the income tax threshold to $275,184, thus relieving 98,000 taxpayers from the tax roll was welcomed by the panel.
"We believe that Jamaicans accept the fact that the government is strapped for cash and has to find ways of funding the budget, and importantly, doing it in a credible and sustainable way," said Mr. Cummings, who added that the Negril Chamber was the only one to take up the government's offer to go through the report of the Matalon committee and make comments.
