Corporations have been put on notice that if Solutions Barbados forms the next government after Thursday’s General Election a change is coming to the way they are taxed.
Christ Church East Central candidate Scott Weatherhead contends that these corporations are presently not paying their fair share in taxes as too many are finding loopholes to avoid paying tax.
At a political meeting in #3 White Hall, St Michael last night he touted his party’s non-austerity and non-borrowing policies as better for Barbados than those put forth by both major political parties. One of these measures was instituting a better functioning tax system since he believes the current status utterly in effective.
And he claimed that that’s because this current system only benefits businesses in this country.
“There is no way to avoid a tax on gross. It is unavoidable. So we must change the way corporations are taxed, from to a tax on profits to a tax on gross revenue. And when you do that it means you no longer need VAT because VAT and NSRL were put there to collect the taxes that Government was not collecting from corporations because if these are avoiding taxes you must pay the shortfall,” Weatherhead, a businessman stressed.
He explained that in 1994 when the Barbados Labour Party took over Government from the Erskine Sandiford-led Democratic Labour Party administration, corporation tax revenues were almost 1 billion. Today, in 2018 in a more than $9 billion economy, doubled what it was in 1994, and with twice as many businesses operating and offshore businesses, yet corporation tax revenues are only $285 million.
Weatherhead said the numbers were lower because of the strategic deceit of these corporations.
“So if we want to help you then we must unfortunately change how corporations are taxed,” he said.
However, Weatherhead assured that changing the tax structure was not intended to hurt businesses. To the contrary, he argued it would actual benefit them tremendously in the long run.
Since when the country rebounds because Barbadians have more money to spend, and because the cost of living has been reduced, economic activity will balloon. (SDB Media)
