THE TAXPAYER
Funding of government and its services is becoming more and more challenging owing to the way our economy and public finances have been managed.
The less money Islanders make, the less government’s tax take and its ability to fund existing services, let alone new services.
Raiding government reserves harms the Island’s ability to borrow money to support existing services. Future taxpayers will be needed to help repay those loans.
Raising more taxes can increase funding in the short term but can adversely affect business productivity and Islanders’ cost of living.
Furthermore, government funding has become increasingly dependent on the income of wealthy residents so targets for tax increases need to be managed wisely as well as fairly.
If elected, I would support an urgent strategic review of our whole tax system, to make it simpler and fairer while supporting our local economy, including:
- rules for new high value resident entrants
- anomalies within certain business sectors
- review of rules that enable locals to pay a reduced rate of tax on investments by use of companies other than private pension companies
- rules that enable locals to avoid income tax on investments by use of companies other than private pension companies.
However, the next States Assembly very much needs to address:
- excessive and wasteful spending by government
- government’s management of economic issues through urgent and direct action. It has been ducking or ignoring the matter for far too long.
In principle I support food and essentials being GST free. I also am aware our public finances may need to support those with lower incomes weather global inflationary increases in the short term in a more targeted way, with income support and tax allowance increases.
I remain in favour of removing GST from local agricultural produce sold locally. This could be presented as an option to retailers whose systems only favour GST uniformity.