I have the feeling that what we call impediments to business ease are largely law makers creating laws to make their private business services mandated by law. *Pinglingisms*, laws that make no sense any place else in the world but the Bahamas where it benefits **the** political power broker. A lawyer must do this, an accountant must do that etc. If the lawmaker then has to ease business processes, it will be very hard to take money from his own pocket.

They forgot to mention that it was his fellow police officers who fell on him.

VAT is generally targeted at manufacturing where different segments of the market take an input and transform it to make it more valuable. What the govt did here as we have no large scale manufacturing sector was basically a money grab.

Wait, I just really read what you said, I hope you're being sarcastic when you say "*customs duty adds value to the product*".

When a "Value Added Tax" references *value*, it is **not** talking about the dollar "*cost*" of the item.

It is saying, when this thing left your hands it left **with more intrinsic value** to the customer than when it entered your hands. *Delivering* a product or inspecting a product adds nothing to the *value* of the product. But adding a finish to a natural wood table adds value to the table.

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Crime in GB has been on the rise for some time now. More shootings, more drug related incidents, more human smuggling incidents. We should not conflate "good job" from the Commissioner on that island with "low" numbers when those numbers are clearly on the rise. We should be ringing the alarm bell and asking what is changing and how do we stop GB from becoming Nassau in 20 years... or less.

The pattern I see is that we allow things to happen as they happen then take credit for the great job we've done if the happenings are good (tourism numbers being a great example solely due to our proximity to the US. We cant even be bothered to clean up the mess of Arawak cay, potters cay and junkanoo beach, then we describe chaos and shantyization as expressions of "bahamian" culture).

If on the other hand the happenings are bad, then "everybody" needs to take responsibility. Look at every aspect of the economy, social life, physical infrastructure.... Nassau just "happens", nobody in charge

My point is saying the "rate" is lower gives no information. It's what the rate is applied against that's critical

It's not bs as much as it's just not the right product at this time. When the universe limits in person interaction again, it'll be perfect... but then again, we have debit and credit cards...

"*A higher rate of VAT*"

The rate is meaningless without a comparison of what the rate is being charged against. We pay VAT on everything but the lowest valued food items and we pay VAT on customs duties, VAT on VAT and with JDL, we pay a further tax of 20cents per pound on every single air freight item.

"*despite a taxation system that has “the lowest rates in the Caribbean”*

The "***rate***" is lower but do we really pay less?

Do other caribbean countries compound VAT by charging VAT on VAT and customs duties?

Do other Caribbean countries pay VAT on high valued items like fuel, education, insurance, financial services, property?

Those are the comparisons to be made, not the "*rate*". 17% of 700 and 10% of 7000 are two drastically different fees.