More headline grabbing nonsense. He claims the needed reforms are "painful". Utter nonsense. How is it "painful" to stop taxing the average person to the bone (by consumption taxes like VAT) and shift to taxes on income (corporate and personal) and applying NORMAL levels of taxation to foreign owned properties (which itself would bring in close to a billion annually)?

Another politician looking for headlines, I'm afraid.

This country would have NO DEBT if it stopped giving wealthy corporations like colina, focol, Arawak Homes, J S Johnson, Doctor's Hospital and Commonwealth Brewery 100 percent breaks on corporate tax, instead of taxing the meagre earnings of the people they make their money off of.

So long as our people are ignorant, people like Sands can get away with saying stupid things and sounding smart.

http://www.tribune242.com/news/2016/apr…

Here is what D'aguilar had to say about the idiotic idea of VAT exemptions, before joining these clowns in this circus.

My whole point is that, instead of rebalancing the utterly regressive tax burden in this country (by at least bringing it into line with international norms) government is engaged in peripheral gimmicks. If they want to help the poor, remove or drastically reduce VAT and make up the difference by taxing the income of wealthier residents - like they do everywhere else on earth.

And yes, consumption taxes ARE higher than elsewhere. Besides, there is no need for them to be as high as they are here (no matter what they are in other places) if we just applied the same principle of fairness and progressiveness as is applied elsewhere.

Believe it or not, apart from our stupid leaders, we are actually relatively blessed and things could be easier here on the consumer and the country/ economy at large if we did not have people with inferiority complexes making policy.

Just out of curiosity, what would your "solution" be?

WOW dude...are you serious?????

A VAT is a universal tax. It applies every time you buy anything. That means you cannot use money without incurring the charge. In other words, it is a charge on the use of money. So every penny that you save, you pay VAT on. Your logic (that you have only paid 2.6%) only applies if corned beef is the only thing that you buy. If not, then you (like everyone else) are incurring an average of 12 percent on the use of your money - all of it. If somehow, you change your whole pattern of consumption and live only on corned beef (with the obvious health effects) then revenues would fall - obviating the efficacy of the whole VAT project, unless you raise the rate. In reality, however, there is no such effect and the exemption achieves nothing apart from optics.

On the issue of income tax vs consumption tax, my point is that consumption taxes are regressive and hit the poor hardest, while income taxes are progressive and fairer and far more conducive to economic growth, since they do not dampen consumption in the same way.

Yes, more than 70% of our revenues are on consumption (in fact far more than that) because we run our country on a pittance by any international standards (spending is 17 percent of GDP) in order to spare focol, colina, Arawak Homes, Commonwealth Brewery, J. S. Johnson and other filthy rich corporations that make ALL of their money on Bahamian consumers. But unlike the whole world, we tax only the consumers, not the wealth that it produces and concentrates in the hands of the few.

of course the "solution" is an income tax on these hogs! Anywhere else on the planet you would be laughed at even to question that. It is also higher and better collected taxes on the foreigner property owners that we have, since that moron Ingraham, been selling our country to with abandon. People can't believe their luck to have found a country where the government is so stupid that it does not seize and sell their homes (and private islands) for having millions of dollars of outstanding Real Property Tax. All our government seems to want is to find more ways of taxing Bahamians, preferably poor and middle class ones. Then they pretend like we have a debt problem, when the whole world can see that we have a tax-break-on-the-rich problem.

As a Bahamian with an iota of sense, rationality and patriotism, I would jump at the opportunity to play my part in national development and pay income taxes, so as to reverse the regressive mess we currently have, which artificially widens the income gap and creates relative poverty among the masses as a matter of policy. Just like in the Marxist USA, Britain and every other socialist cesspool you can name!

Probably. But since I personally employ over 30 people on three islands in the Bahamas, in the United States and in Haiti and pay even my messenger (in The Bahamas) a minimum of $400 weekly ($384 adjusted for NIB) and make the vast majority of my money not as a lawyer, but as a business owner who started and operates successful shipping, telecoms and international trade businesses, I wouldn't know.

But let me guess: it exists quite naturally in the vocabulary of lazy, greedy, incompetent business owners who expect to be rich by owning a third rate, unproductive shop while paying their workers a pittance, right? Lol.

So Commonwealth Bank, Arawak Homes, Colina Insurance, Commonwealth Brewery, J S Johnson and Bahamas First would presumably pick up and leave if they had to pay tax on their corporate income???? Because these (and NOT foreign people who are "attracted" here) are the kind of corporations that should be paying tax on their incomes.

The Bahamas is not unable to collect property tax. It does not want to collect property tax. It could easily do so, but has a government composed of people so ignorant that they think seizing and selling foreign luxury properties in the family islands (which are the vast majority of delinquent properties by value) would be "economic suicide". Just like you think income tax would be "economic suicide" although the latter has nothing to do with foreigners and involves, by definition, only high income bahamians. It is simply a matter of ignorance, my friend.

"...the only thing attracting individuals and corporations to this nation is the free tax regime"...With that statement, I see it is a useless exercise to even attempt to reach you with reason or fact.

Of the major drivers of the Bahamian economy, can you name one that has anything to do with a "free tax regime"?

Firstly, the tax regime is only free when it comes to income tax etc. (it is anything but free on consumption taxes, which are high). Income tax has nothing to do with foreign investment in the tourist or any other industry, since we have had a policy since the 1960s that prevented those who come here (whether as investors or otherwise) from participating in the domestic economy in a manner that would involve them paying income tax.

Atlantis, Baha Mar, Sandals, Baker's Bay, Breezes, Hutchinson Whampoa et al all pay corporate income taxes in their home jurisdiction. They have nothing to do with the income tax debate, nor would foreign second homeowners or residents (even if they did do much for the economy, which they don't).

It is people like me (higher earning Bahamians) that are the only beneficiaries of the fact we foolishly lack income tax. But the policy results in devastatingly high taxes on consumption that dampen economic growth since poor people are the consumers, while we high earners put our money in banks where it benefits the economy marginally.

How people like you manage to confuse the issue of internal taxation with foreign investment is laughable and it mirrors the ignorance of Dr. Minnis and other politicians who know zero about the economy of the Bahamas.