PHILIPSBURG–Finance Minister Perry Geerlings made it clear on Thursday that he has no plans to raise taxes, and noted instead that his plans are to get persons in the “grey economy” to pay their fair share.
“I have no intentions whatsoever to raise taxes,” Geerlings said during the debate of the draft 2019 budget. “Those who have been stealing from their own pockets are the ones that I am trying to close the net on.”
He said a significant amount of taxes goes uncollected in the country and, like Members of Parliament (MPs), he also has “a problem with easy targets.”
“In in the whole reform, we are not going after the easy targets – the ones who are paying all the time. We are going after those who did not, and those who, for years, are moving around in the ‘grey economy’, as they say.”
According to Geerlings, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated in a report that for the Caribbean region the grey economy is around 37 per cent of countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). Taking St. Maarten’s GDP into consideration, he said that if authorities were to receive funds from at least 10 per cent of the persons operating in the grey economy, this would result in NAf. 60 million annually that government can collect.
“We have had a compliance problem for years. If you talk to people in the street everyone will agree that the Tax Department is dysfunctional, and now we have a chance to make it work for all of us. While some are getting away with it, hungry children are going to school. … We owe it to ourselves,” he said.
Up to the end of the day on Thursday Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin, Justice Minister Cornelius de Weever, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports (ECYS) Wycliffe Smith and Finance Minister Perry Geerlings answered questions posed in the first round of the budget debate. The remaining ministers are expected to provide their answers when the meeting continues at 10:00am today, Friday, and is expected to go into the second round.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/88704-geerlings-says-i-have-no-plans-to-raise-taxes
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