Submitted by Old Onions Bag
“the quality of mercy wanes”
Exactly what is hoped to be achieved by these draconian tax measures? It is about time gurus in the Finance Ministry wake up and see the results of their ploy. Can Barbados ever be able to recover given the prevailing circumstances and no projected new revenue inflows? Why what then is hoped to be achieved by these continued, less than auspicious ‘undertaken’ methods…. a quick death for some especially the poor, old and degenerate?
A stage now has been set for pensioners and the aged to falter, that is, if the pseudo drugs don’t take them first. There is seemingly no reprieve for them who lodged all their survival savings in CLICO or BAICO, now that they have both gone belly up. Whatever happened to all the talk of assistance in the form of a structured payment program to assist these aged? Why how much more time do they have ? We are soon moving into the third year since the CLICO debacle. Some Barbadian families have no recourse but to support themselves and the elderly from saving, that are hitting bottom fast. Yet some continues on this path of high intake thru taxes, with no consideration for the plight levied on the back of citizen Joe…Gran dad in the one hand…Jenny and Jane graduates with no employment in the other. How do they expect poor Joe to cope?
It is a well known fact that high taxes in a time of recession will retard further what little growth an economy may have mustered….Why then the 2.5 % increase in VAT tax in 2011? We were told THEN what we are occasioning NOW,… would come to being, yet we went ahead. Now the situation is worse. Unemployment has increased from 9% to 11.8% in less than a year and the economy has slowed down even further? What now?Shall they then attempt to remove the VAT in an all out effort to revive the economy or increase it further to 20% ? Why tell us economic gurus at MOF, as your postulates of past, at most, have been most difficult to fathom.
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