Over the past few weeks, we've been telling you about the big, oversized bite that the select customs brokers have been taking from car dealers at the northern border. Let's put it like this: those who collect the bite get almost 7 dollars out of every ten charged for the importation of a vehicle - meaning that the government coffers get only three of those dollars! It's a problem that has existed for decades but the size of the bite has now been elevated to the realm of the obscene.
But the PM and Minister of Finance says that's in the past since customs switched in January to the straight transaction value and not the discretionary residual value.
But that doesn't negate the millions of dollars that were diverted from the public purse to enrich apex feeders on the kickback network.
But the PM seems to hardly care about those many millions lost - he's looking forward:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We have been very concerned about what's going on and if you were to remember around 2 Decembers ago, what has happened that over time, this thing has been happening from time immemorial where car dealers or importers bring their own invoices and then they use the issue of salvage titles to be able to try to circumvent. They have been given great latitude to the custom officers when setting duties and so we've been concerned and we knew that something was not working well so what we did last 2 Decembers we decided, or was it January, that we would then insist now that you bring your official document where you bring your bill your sale to be able to set the tax and to remove all the latitude that custom officers had but when we attempted to introduce that new policy which is also law we had then the dealers they started agitating and wanting to close the borders, you guys were making a big deal about it, so we felt okay, they said they were not given enough time, so we pulled it back and said okay we're going to give you enough time so all of last year, we've been informing them, informing them this is coming, this is coming and now that it is in effect, what has happened? Now people are starting to pay more taxes and I suspect that these very same people who were happy to pay the kickback, now that they can't do that, they're starting to leak the information, I suspect, I don't know. What's important that that practice has been stopped. But more importantly as I mentioned to Cabinet on Tuesday when I saw the reporting from Channel 7 I said I found it shameful and disgraceful and of course as the minister responsible of course I have to take responsibility at the end of the day but that we had already stopped that practice so what he was reporting was something that happened before. I'm supposed to be meeting with the Comptroller of Customs on Friday along with the Financial Secretary because now what we need to do is to look at the taxes."
We note that there are persistent, credible reports of special breaks on duty for imported vehicles being given to politically well connected persons.
