By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.ne

IF THE Government implements another tax on top of Value added Tax it will “cripple the middle class and kill the poor”, FNM Leader Dr Hubert Minnis said yesterday.

Dr Minnis told The Tribune he agrees with National Health Insurance and believes that every Bahamian deserves access to heath care. However, he said, the way the government is going about it will give the Bahamian people “hell”.

Dr Minnis said a payroll tax should not even be considered at this moment, when the impact of VAT has still not yet been fully calculated.

He was responding to a report given to to the government by consultants, that suggested a 5.8 per cent pay roll tax, increased taxes on “luxury items” such as alcohol and tobacco and “double” the ceiling for National Insurance Board contributions to fund the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme.

“What else do they want from the Bahamian people?” Dr Minnis asked. “Disposable income is already gone. Bahamians cannot afford to pay their light bills and water bills and buy groceries, let alone attempt to travel or spend time outside the home with their children. Everyone should have quality and affordable health care but it has to be done properly not to destroy the middle class and expand poverty.

“VAT has just been introduced now you want to introduce another one. This government does not care about the Bahamian people and they are proving it.”

Dr Minnis admitted he had not read the entire proposal but said from what he did see there is no mention of private sector involvement.

“Nothing was said about involving the private insurance sector. Is the government trying to destroy them too? They have a role to play and employ a lot of individuals. Under this administration the poverty level increases to 43,000 and now with this extra burden it will probably increase to 52,000. When will this government stop? They must be removed. They crippled Bahamians with Value Added Tax and now they will kill them with another.”

Last Monday, Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez told the House of Assembly that NHI “will likely” be financed through a new tax on Bahamians. At the time he did not specify what this new tax would be, nor did he say how much it would cost taxpayers to introduce the plan.

He added that taxes are “better than death”.

“We have to pay for it and as you may recall in the Blue Ribbon Commission report, that back then it was supposed to be paid for with a tax that was equitable because the driving force for NHI is the creation of equity,” Dr Gomez said.

“And so we had proposed a 5.4 per cent tax on salary and it is up to the team that is in place to come up with what we are going to propose this time that has not been determined.”

Last week Dr Gomez told parliamentarians that NHI plans were well underway as Sanigest Internacional and the Ministry of Health had recently executed a consultancy agreement. The agreement is to provide technical assistance for the implementation of the insurance scheme.