It's 16 days to implementation of the General Sales Tax and most businesses and private individuals don't know if the new tax will be a godsend or just a ton of bricks on already over-taxed consumers. Adding to that uncertainty is that with only weeks to go, in the view of the business sector, the tax is still being fine-tuned and there are still major areas of concern that are yet to be addressed. Hoping to address these, the Chamber of Commerce organized a business mixer to find out exactly what will happen come tax day. We visited to find out what are the outstanding areas of concern.
Dionne Miranda, Chamber of Commerce
"This training session is for the actual people who will be filing GST. So it's a training to let them know the paperwork necessary, how to actually file it, and to make sure they are having the proper documentation and information for the GST. There has been no such training done so far so realistically this is the first one. So this is the reason for them being here with the four to five o'clock session.
The second part is for us to go over the final portions of GST. When you ask if we have, we don't know about it. You have to understand that many times we have been receiving presentations and when our membership asks certain questions, we wouldn't have the answer to that and we are going to iron it out later. The reality is we haven't gotten a final on what the entire GST package is and that is what it is about today. Implementation is July 1st so it's necessary that we know every aspect of it.
The whole GST implementation has been a work in progress. Many times as consultations are done, different problems come up and different ideas come up from the public and then the GST technical team is actually going back. I can tell you one thing, we are very pleased that this has been a very consultative process.
We still have fundamental problems in the way it was being laid out, in some of the taxations as you realize, it is going to affect the agro-productive sector heavily; the tourism industry is concerned about double taxation issue in terms of accommodation tax plus gross sales tax; commerce is concerned about different areas. So honestly nobody is comfortable to the point that we want them to be and that is the reason for the constant dialogue and getting to understand it because the fear that we all feel towards July 1st could also be out of the fear that we are not quite comfortable with knowledge or the full information."
For those wanting more information on GST policy and practices, tomorrow the tax implementation team will have an open house at the Complex Building on Mahogany Street. It runs form nine in the morning to five in the evening, and everyone is invited.
