he is only scared about his own banking business because other jurisdictions are then black listing Bahamas - but does it seriously impact anything other than banks?

The only thing broken is tax collection and adding more taxes is not going to fix it.

Why are all these new tax articles coming out now? This looks like a coordinated effort by a handful of individuals to shove down the throat of Bahamians even more taxes.

exactly. there is no case of a tax that was introduced and later abolished. everything they put in place is here to stay.

BS. Trim down the bloated civil service (1), or better yet, actually collect on something as simple as Real Property Tax before you push a BS income tax on the people that actually do pay. Granted, now isn't the time to lay off the government workers, but the government needs to realize that they are not going to get blood out of a stone. Bahamians already pay duty, VAT, RPT if not in the Family Islands, etc. and we don't get a darn thing from it. Not even the roads, plenty of potholes where I live.

I would like to see these donkeys try and track income when they can't even collect on a friggin immobile physical structure, or vacant piece of property. How are you going to set the brackets, what is the exemption mark? Will Bahamians making 20k a year have to pay out of the meager earnings that they make, what rate? What are these donkeys going to do when the 2% of Bahamians that actually are in a "high-income" bracket start hiding all of their assets behind LLCs and trusts? How can anyone even be bright enough to not see that this will be used as a tool of political warfare, and only certain people will have to pay (just like BPL, water and sewage, and everything else in this country).

Anyone arguing for an income tax here needs to get their head checked to determine their sanity....or forced to take an IQ test.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…

Good Wikipedia link which shows that we have one of the highest number of public sector employees as a percentage of the total workforce, and since the figure is from 2009, this percentage is certainly higher now.

Can you believe that one of these "donkeys" calls this "austerity"???

Yeah, the data is over a decade old. Unfortunately, accurate and up to date statistics are hard to come by for nearly anything in this country. I can only imagine that the current figure is a bit larger than that now.

As I stated, we can't decrease the size of the civil service now, doing so in the midst of an economic disaster is a horrible idea, but we have to start thinking for the future if things ever do get better.

We need to increase revenue and slash unnecessary spending at this point, we needed to do that a long time ago as a matter of act. That being said, an income tax is not going to do that. I don't know how anyone can ever think that an income tax is a good idea in this country. Most Bahamians make 20k or less ie. they don't make enough to survive now. Raising VAT to 12% made most of them ball out in agony, I can't imagine what taxing their income away will do.

The people that propose an income tax here have no clue how the average Bahamian lives. They are living far too cozy behind their gated communities.

50% now

The 33% does not probably include Bananasair, BPL, W&S, Arawak Cay Port, NIA, COB, etc. Add these in and you get up to 50% easily. I'd bet 2021 the number is probably higher like 60/40. 40% of us are working our a$$e$ off to support the rest of the entire country. Good grief Charlie Brown.

Someone please tell Mr. Bowe that what we desperately need is Government Reform, not Tax Reform. Without the former, the latter is meaningless.

We were told VAT would be used to replace customs duties and help pay down, not slow down the growth of, our national debt. Well that certainly did not happen. What we got instead was an even higher VAT rate and an even more bloated government along with greater than ever waste, fraud and corruption at all levels of the public sector, from our elected officials right on down.

Our country has been taken down by systemic corruption. It's accepted, rewarded and culturally ingrained throughout most of the public sector and among most of our elected officials. More taxes is definitely not the answer. We urgently need Government Reform. But instead Minnis seems quite content to standby and wait for the IMF to instigate and impose on us the most severe and draconian austerity measures imaginable. That's what I call failed leadership!

Government administrations are and have been broken since the PVC Pipe Scandal.
Government cannot build anything without double cost in overruns, and at an original cost of $500/Sq Ft! I'm not even gonna comment of the civil service.
Use the TIEA agreements to find all the offshore money held by the elected going back to 1973. These Dumb asses signed onto TIEA agreements, Might as well get some use out of them!
That aught to cover 50% of the national debt.
The only good thing is the IMF will downsize the Civil service, but the service will head south of the crap shoot it already is.

@ The_Oracle Good points. The Civil Service has been a body part of the political parties and have been packed by alternating govts rewarding its followers. Lots of inefficiencies which have stagnated growth of the nation, lots of archaic functions, lots of paperwork, lots of anomiily, lots of woefully incorrect staffing like 1 person doing the work of 10 and10 workers doing the work of 1. Lots of ppolitical chicanery many workers fully creating harebrained money wasting projects initiated by politicans and have the cultivated culture of speaking with the other side of their mouth to new alternating govt. etc. Wastages, wastages, wastages billions of dollars.

Sum total result is the entire nation suffers with eyes wide open and with increasing Nation Debt pushed and crippling present and future generations.

Further to the above, we have an election looming which presents two piss poor choices to continue the farce and thieving.
No doubt we will switch from Fric to frac and change nothing.

Vote for the independent candidate even if he or she is unknown to you. It's highly unlikely any independent candidate could be worse than the PLP or FNM candidate.

Protest by not voting

Suggest you too vote for the independent candidate even if he or she is unknown to you. It's highly unlikely any independent candidate could be worse than the PLP or FNM candidate.

an independent vote will speak volumes more than boycotting the polls

btw, absolutely at the contrary, the banking system is broken (not the taxes)

Someone close to Customs said if Customs was to set up a secondary checkpoint and examine containers leaving the dock for a month, he can guarantee Customs revenue will double. He says some of the biggest businesses are involved in smuggling but, like most things in government, the focus is on the small man. And some of the businesses involved are owned by persons who are attached to high ranking officials in government. Both parties. One may say this is just false speculation or foolish gossip but if one was to go a bit further to examine some facts. Even when the importation of asks were banned by the PM,’to protect the local industry,‘these masks were available at certain businesses and from street vendors. Some products sold by certain nationalities in this country, including toothpaste and female hygiene products are known to be fake. Some are so poorly made and cheaply made, their packaging fall apart on the store shelves. Now this nationality is moving heavily into the liquor market and distributors fir some popular labels claim that many of the products sold on the local market are not distributed by them. Then move on to the area parts market...

This same nationality is allowed to sell liquor and food in stores that a Bahamian cannot get a license to do.

Meanwhile, corruption is killing us while we do the PLP and FNM flag-waving dance!

The Bahamas is the 6th most expensive country on the planet to live in, tourism is dying a slow painful death, bankings' all but dead, and nothing works.

Let's keep the PLP and FNM and aim for 1st place!

Strongly suggest that you too vote for the independent candidate even if he or she is unknown to you. It's highly unlikely any independent candidate could be worse than the PLP or FNM candidate.

Tax collection and enforcement of fines and penalties is the main thing that is broken!

The staff at most of the Bahamas main tax revenue departments are lazy or corrupt, if they all did their jobs properly we'd all be better off.

Thank goodness for digitization, (30 years too late) I just hope it is being audited properly.

When the public sector civil service is reduced to an appropriate and manageable 15% of the entire labour force, then we can talk. until then... i say general strike if they want more blood from the stone. Right now 40% of us are working our a$$e$ off to support the other 60% of the workforce who get lifelong govt salary, deduction, pension, health insurance. My families biggest annual bill is health insurance... guess what is going to be cut when taxes go up? the health insurance.

If Income Tax is introduced we will lose all the incentives to invest in The Bahamas. Overseas investors are looking to invest where they do not have tax burdens. No wonder Panama has experienced a booming economy as investors left us and neighbouring nations when we were forced to sign tax treaties with Europe, Canada and the U.S.A. Money goes where it is welcome.