PM says VAT campaign to begin next year

The Nassau Guardian

PM says VAT campaign to begin next year

The government intends to bring New Zealand experts on value-added tax (VAT) to the country as early as January and will ramp up its public educational campaign next year, Prime Minister Perry Christie said yesterday.

In late November, Christie told reporters that New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had offered to send people to The Bahamas who can explain the benefits his country has received from VAT.

Christie said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to make an official request for the group to travel to The Bahamas.

“The prime minister of New Zealand indicated that he would respond immediately to that request, so I assume, and I would like to think, that we are talking about sometime in January that they would be coming,” Christie told reporters after he gave a speech at the Bahamas Hotel & Tourism Association Leadership Summit held at the Hilton.

“I have great confidence in the team that would be sent out here because they have, in fact, had tremendous experience and a couple of the leaders in the Ministry of Finance told me that they have a system that is as efficient as any in the world.”

Christie met the New Zealand leader at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka in November. Christie also suggested that details surrounding the reform of the country’s tax system depend on a number of external factors.

“The work is continuing on VAT, the people who will be in charge of information technology they are being prepared. The Central Revenue Agency, I am being asked to add considerable numbers of people to the staff, we have hired a leading firm out of the Pacific area to come in to The Bahamas to superintend and assist in this matter,” he said. “We are waiting on the New Zealanders and others to come in and then we will launch.

“You would expect, when we do all of these things, that the government will have a position, meaning me, I will have a certain position on the matter and my position will be influenced by a combination of what is happening in the foreign investment area and what is happening in the public sector area in terms of direct expenditure into the economy. It will be based on an estimate as to what the economy can bear in the country, and when.”

The government plans to implement VAT at a rate of 15 percent in most cases on July 1, 2014. Some members of the business community have opposed the new tax.

Yesterday, Christie said those in the private sector who have issues with VAT should speak with him privately instead of airing concerns only in the press. “It’s critical for me that we understand in this country that we have to do it together and that the government, ordinarily, would not have any particular enthusiasm to impose taxes on people, particularly if it is argued that it would have some dampening impact on the economy,” Christie said.

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