Atherley warns against heavy taxation

Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley wants to know what impact government’s decision to slash taxes on corporations would have on its arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“You entered into an arrangement with the IMF earlier this year and part of the context of entering into this arrangement was that your corporate tax rate would be 30 per cent, and so your revenue generation levels expected ‘x’ amount. Now if you have to reduce that to a high of five percent that means you will have to make up that tax from somewhere and suggests to me that in a short while you will be coming to Barbadians again with new taxes to make up on the short fall,” he argued.

Adding his voice to the debate on the Income Tax Amendment and Validation Bill 2018 in the House of Assembly, he questioned why after raising corporation tax in June from 25 to 30 per cent, there was now a drastic shift to dropping it to between one and five per cent just a few months later.

Atherley also warned the Mia Mottley-led government that it was taking the same path as the former Democratic Labour Party administration in placing heavy taxes on the backs of Barbadians.

He said, “There is a fuel charge, there is a garbage and sewage charge, there is a health contribution.”

“Now we may make the argument that the situation with which we are confronted with in Barbados today demands that we do these things…but we have to consider that we are tracking in the same direction that the former administration trekked and which we criticised. One of the first acts of the Democratic Labour Party when it came to Parliament in 2008 was to raise over $100 million in new taxes in an economy which was about to face the impact of a global recession and we have not recovered from it up until now.

“…In the budget in June 2018, the taxes raised far exceed $100 million, in fact if you look at just a few of them, $85 million from fuel charge changes, $57 million in health service contribution, $65 million in Garbage and Sewage (contribution), $41 million from tax break of those working for $75,000 or over…so when you remove the road tax and NSRL you have still abundantly exceeded what you were getting in that situation. So in my view we have to be careful as we may track where the DEMS tracked, even though we may want to suggest that we are doing it out of expediency and that we are left without a choice,” he outlined. (JMB)