Submitted by The People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France identified Barbados as a tax haven

A resounding “NO WAY” to citizens voting for economists running as candidates in any of the next constituency elections in this country – is the central theme of a commentary that the PDC has done, and that it was on the verge of submitting to BU for publication as this week’s PDC article.

But, that particular commentary (has) had to be stood down until the next PDC installment, primarily because this present submission which the reader is reading now, as this weeks PDC article – seeks to somewhat describe and explain – a far more timely and exacting fundamental matter – why Barbados will continue on a path of becoming a second rate Third World developing country within the next 10-15 years, taking more and more orders from people like the OECD, if the BLP and DLP are NOT within the next 6 years electorally removed from the Parliament of this country for ever.

Already, BLP and DLP governments have failed to lead the way in repositioning Barbados in a manner and state that sees the country benefiting, materially, financially, politically, etc. from the extant shifting of the balance of power in international relations from the West to the East (a situation that the West can do little about on its own).

And, they have grossly failed too to capitalize on a great number of political financial opportunities that have come with a very significant part of the basis of Western Imperialism collapsing – ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the scuttling of the FTAA, the stalling of the Doha Round, the West’s military withdrawal out of Iraq, etc.

Nevertheless, what the PDC is going to do at a later this stage of this essay is to use the ongoing OECD’s Harmful Tax Initiative, and a little of the current and historical issues associated with it to give credential support to the above two contentions.

Furthermore, we will use evidence of two of some very evil political tax strategies (one local/ the other international) to show how much Barbados – as a result of gross BLP/DLP dependence on the West for ideological support, political value imports, trade, aid and investment –  is on the path to becoming a second rate Third World developing country in the not too distant future, in spite of the trash coming forward from Peter Boos and Co, about the Barbados Entrepreneurial Foundation’s objective of making Barbados the number one entrepreneurial hub by 2020.

Indeed, many readers of the Sunday Sun Newspaper would have observed that the Sunday Sun issue of November 13, 2011, carried a story which dealt with the latest round in this very outrageous but unsophisticated issue of global Taxation.

In that news story titled – NOT Barbados – the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, is reported as naming Barbados among 11 so-called Tax havens, which he apparently said would be shunned by some so-called international community.

The story went on to add that Sarkozy was losing patience with countries that failed to meet transparency standards, and how they (whosoever he apparently meant) do not want any more Tax Havens.

Now, Senator Maxine McClean of Barbados, in the said news story, seemingly meekly responded to some of what Sarkozy said by defensively murmuring that Barbados was no Tax Haven, but that it was a low-tax jurisdiction that was white listed by the OECD – which essentially means that Barbados has substantially implemented the standards on Transparency and Exchange of Information based on the number of TIEAs it has signed with many other countries in this world (same Sunday Sun news story) (Seems like Senator Kerrie Symmonds has a different but still sheepish view in that regard).

But, to be truthful, though, these latest politically tinged exchanges between, on one hand, the OECD/Paris Club/FATF, and on the other hand, many countries which have long had offshore financial centers (like Barbados), and some of which are seen as Tax Havens by the same OECD), have had their roots in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. See the OECD’s 1998 report Harmful TAX Competition: An emerging Global Issue, and the OECD’s 2000, Towards Global Tax Cooperation.

One of the major differences in political conceptual emphases between the 1998 report and the international political turbulence of those times, and the 2000 report and the international political ferment of those times, was that, whereas the bullying and bellicose tones that were backed up by threats of unspecified sanctions being imposed by the OECD ( a non-sovereign entity) on countries that were  listed as tax havens, and also the countercharges that were made by governments of those countries that were at the receiving end of OECD strictures at that time, had helped to define the 1998 period, cooperation, conferencing and collusion on the part of those different sides had helped to redefine the post 2000 period up until this latest belligerent salvo by Sarkozy.

Such changes in the mood of the OECD/Paris Club/FATF, surely would have indicated to the PDC that there were even political divisions among many of those countries making up the OECD, esp as it related to defining what harmful tax competition was, and whether Tax Havens and such like also existed in the European and American regions.

Anyhow, since the late 1990s and up until now, these disgusting BLP/DLP governments have been failing to realize that Western imperialism is becoming, at this juncture,  weaker and weaker by the year, as a result of many greater global social spiritual intellectual political movements toward the delegitimization and illegitimization of many once-thought-of valid and sound Euro-centric Westernist social political financial ideologies, philosophies and psychologies that would have been helping to govern social, trade, investment and technological development within and without Europe and the American regions.

So, now that these circumstances are happening, more and more countries are achieving greater freedom and liberty by removing or reducing, to their ultimate benefit, the social and income costs associated with the relevant oppressive Euro-centric ideals; are achieving such greater freedom and democracy by  expanding on their own low social and income costing ideological, philosophical, psychological, political, productive systems; and there from at the same time are having to eventually move to the East for NOT ONLY less costly ideological, philosophical, psychological political productive systems, but also cheaper goods and services that are emerging out of them – The movement by many countries in regard of greater political and diplomatic and  trading ties with the East embraces such thoughts.
So, a careful analysis of these particular OECD/Paris Club actions/utterances will reveal for a very discerning Barbadian public, if they care to understand and accept, that the posturing over and over about Tax Havens, Harmful Tax Competition, non-compliance with tax and transparency standards, corporate inversions, etc. are not as the said OECD has been representing them to be.  But are really covers for they saying and doing such things that they cannot stop the same sovereign countries from doing, esp. if the OECD pushes these agendas too far ( which indicates again the limit to imperialist reach and expansion).

Also, even though the PDC does not believe in so-called Tax Havens, it recognizes that to export Taxation is a wicked evil deliberate consequential part of Western imperialism, and that the OECD must be made to understand that countries have every right to counter or neutralize the worst effects of such taxation being exported to them.

Progressive governments across the world, esp. lesser developed countries will one of these times move towards the Abolition of Taxation ( AND EVIL SCOURGE IT IS!!). Such an globally right and proper objective being achieved , along with the doing away with many very costly Euro-centric ideologies and philosophies, and many odious locally adapted Euro-centric systems, will help to create for those lesser developed countries that are also low cost producers, and that have the “right” political environment and social and physical infrastructures, seismic shifts in the Balance of Power from some other areas to theirs, as there shall be significant declines registered in the cost of doing business and investing in those countries.

By crappy BLP and DLP governments in Barbados NOT having the damn vision, the wisdom and understanding, the political class to Abolish Taxation – in all senses part of the basis of Western Imperialism –  have meant that they have failed to realize that TAXATION, in turn, with its anti-freedom, anti-liberty ideals, structures and processes, has NOT ONLY been helping to ensure the utter bankruptcy and degradation of these Western industrialized countries at this juncture – with their heavy costing physical public infrastructures, goods and services – military weapons and craft included, BUT has ALSO been helping to rightfully ensure that these Western governments and their cohorts’ abilities and capacities to greater imperialize and colonize other spaces is seriously hampered and diminished.

So, instead of realizing the great irrational fear that governments in Europe and America have for Taxation being abolished in some other parts of the world, and therefore  as a consequence developing national multinational programs consistent with such, these uneducated backward BLP/DLP Governments have been caught up in psychological pantomimes and games with the OECD, and have been even colluding with those governments in their altogether continuing to look at ways (hence the conferencing mediating) where all of them together will not be too much out competed by the other(s), in the quest to continue stealing and pilfering the massive incomes of the broad masses and middle classes of people in those affected countries (JUST CHECK THE STUPID OBSEQUIOUS NONSENSE THAT IS REPORTED TO HAVE COME OUT OF THE MOUTH OF HUBERT INGRAHAM (Nation, Tuesday, November 22, 2011).

What BLP/DLP governments have grossly failed to understand is that as TAXATION has been helping to weaken the imperial strength of Western great powers (as well as that of the world’s sole superpower), it has also been helping to weaken the industrial, commercial and export capacities of Barbados.

Therefore, Taxation has been helping to prevent Barbados from developing greater levels of capital and investment opportunities necessary to trade and cooperate more with other lower income costing jurisdictions, and through it all which it would naturally learn how to become  low cost production and distribution center vis-à-vis becoming a world class society.

In Barbados, it is the broad masses and middle classes that are oppressed by TAXATION policies. So, that when BLP/DLP government go and tax the incomes of businesses (big and small) they force these businesses to tremendously push up the cost to the incomes of consumers of goods and services in Barbados and outside of Barbados.

As that, it is the workers in government and big businesses that contract with government to provide goods and services that are the main beneficiaries of these ill-gotten tax proceeds, still it is that they are unable to so readily pay for the goods and services that carry extremely high costs to the incomes of consumers. So, individuals, households and businesses generally always have greater and greater debt, owing to, et al, TAXATION, and the high cost of use of money in this country.
But because the process of/Taxation is absolutely unproductive, inefficient, etc. these ungodly backwardist BLP/DLP governments have over the years felt themselves forced to go and borrow more and more money/value locally internationally to secure a greater debt-ridden unwieldy governmental apparatus, to disgustingly burden the very productive people and entities in Barbados.

What a diabolical state of affairs, when it can be seen that the Taxation system of a country, in this case, Barbados, forces that country to go and borrow more foreign exchange rather than to have the relevant productive sectors/sub-sectors earn it!!!

At the international level in Europe, the USA and Japan, it is the broad masses and middle classes that are like those classes in Barbados that are oppressed by Taxation. So, that when governments that belong to the OECD go and Tax their own corporations many of which are multinational corporations, they in turn push staggeringly up the cost to the incomes of not only domestic consumers of their goods and services, but also the cost to the incomes of international consumers of their goods and services.

But because Western Imperialist countries export Taxation more than import Taxation , and because the process of Taxation is so absolutely unproductive and inefficient and irrational, many governments in the lesser developing regions  feel forced to go and borrow monies from multilateral institutions at tremendous costs in order to conduct the supposed business of government – money/values which to some extent have already come through the imperialistic process.     So, what a brutish state of affairs when Western Imperialist countries in exporting Taxation (more than importing it) and when facilitated by some very damnable locally adapted Euro-centric systems, it is found that many lesser developing countries are seen to be more dependent on borrowing the currencies of, say, OECD countries than on using their productive sectors to earn them, or more keen on getting those particular OECD countries to use their own esp. single currencies.

In closing, the facts are such that from here onwards as Barbados has to face up to its own Taxation costs, has to face up to lower domestic output and income owing to Taxation, and when it has to confront the exportation of international Taxation, it must, when considering the very high cost of use of the US dollar/ the cost of use of money in Barbados/Interest Rates costs locally, face up to the imminence of severe Balance of Payments and Trade crises in the future and that no little amount of foreign capital inflows or borrowing from the multilateral institutions would stave off indefinitely.

Thus, so many things political have to be done to make sure that such crises are avoided. So, part of the profound obligation of the most politically conscious of the broad masses and middle classes is therefore to make sure that the BLP and DLP – who are fast accelerating Barbados’ movement to a second rate Third World country – are removed once and for all from the parliament of Barbados, and to make sure that those economists who are helping Barbados to reach this low class status, and who are running  in the next constituency elections are totally rejected by the majority of voters in those elections.