Honestman, "minimal impact on people" is a coded message/dog whistle meaning that the PLP will tax businesses. This can be done by increases in business license fees, employer NI tax rates etc. However, these will be too slow to raise funds.

I feel they will increase the VAT rate from 7.5% to 10.0% and say that the difference will go towards hurricane relief. Then the funds will be posted to the General Fund like the VAT and gambling taxes and will be buried in abuse to fund BoB, Resolve, Bamsi, BEC, Water and Sewerage, BahamasAir, lavish trips to China and NY for PLP cronies, the bloated governement payrol and many other government entities which should all be closed down and let private businesses perform these services.

Besides the horrible BEC customer service I am paying between my generator, high power costs, work disruption and ruined electrical equipment my business is suffering over $50,000 in cost. Compare this with my Florida Power and Light bill of under $2,000 per annum.

Have made the decision to stop working in Nassau as electrical costs are killing small businesses. Will sell out if there are any buyers and move.

John, obviously the people do not believe the government. The gas station lines are extremely long and only 20% of the houses have electricity.

Some recommendations to BPL/BEC based on how Florida Power and Light operates.

1. Please insert detailed power outage and hurricane information on your website.

2. Hire 20 to 30 customer service agents to answer your phone. It is deplorable in this day and age for a monopoly never to answer the phone.

3. Hire more linesmen to fix the overhead lines faster. It is not acceptable that 48 hours after the hurricane that there are wires in the MAIN roads. I hardly see any BEC trucks on the road. In years gone by they were up and down the streets. Please pay your staff overtime so they will get the country up and running faster.

4. Bring in a contingent of linesmen from the US to get the ditribution up faster.

As a Bahamain I feel terrible that after paying $600 million in VAT, $100 million in webshop taxes, higher national insurance rates and higher business licence fees that we can't get the lights on faster.

I hope they have the satellite radios working in the family islands.

And, please, please stop making these poor island folk store keepers from having to do VAT.

Another devastation in our southern islands will cause everyone to just give up.

3 reasons in why I'm so over joyed that the incompetent PLP and FNM took so long to approve oil drilling in the Bahamas. Well done PLP and FNM, keep dragging your feet on oil drilling!

1. The Bahamas has the most beautiful waters in the world. The incompetent BPC would probably spill the oil and destroy our oceans and islands.

2. The price of crude has dropped 50% in the last 5 years from over $100 to less than $50. Who is BPC trying to fool that us that you drill for oil profitably for less than $75 per barrel. If they had started drilling the operation would have been halted long ago and the equipment left in the Bahamas as an eye sore and destroy our coastlines.

3. Go see the movie Deepwater Horizon this weekend. Click on trailer below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yASbM8…

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2016…

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2016…

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2016…

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2016…

news flash to the clueless PLP, FNM and DNA leadership and bone headed bankers lamenting the demise of last centuries Bahamian tax haven business.
You are wasting your time with "unilateral" tax treaties. The world has moved into trading blocks (eu, nafta, asean, Pacific Trade Agreement, G20 etc.). Individual developed world countries don't want to negotiate 40 plus tax treaties with each banana republic that asks for one. This is because in today's day and age of global trade unilateral treaties are useless in tracking international money laundering.
Example. If they is a rogue with an African passport transferring the proceeds of crime using the international financial system how is an automatic tax exchange treaty with the UK going to help? It wont because its not a tax issue and the individual is not a UK citizen so the tax treaty is worthless.
A "multilateral" exchange of information treaty is far more useful. In this instance the EU, UK or the US can automatically and quickly get information from all banks and corporate registered agents in the Bahamas on this rogues dealings in the Bahamas without having to figure out if they have a tax treaty with us and exactly what types of information the treaty covers. The tax treaty may not cover matters outside of tax evasion.
So I would advise Hope to stop beating her chest about how unfairly the Bahamas is being treated. The global powers don't have time to waste about what you think about the treatment of the Bahamas. They want to stop international proceeds of crime from being hidden in the Bahamas. Either we comply or we continue to loose more and more access to the global correspondent banking system.
Read what happened in Belize as correspondent banking relationships are systematically terminated in that country (link below). Our leaders are still under the impression that this can't happen in the Bahamas. But why risk it? Who's interest are they protecting? Why negotiate 40+ TIAs when one can do the trick. Who is getting rich off of this nonsensical negotiation? What is the cost of all those trips abroad to negotiate 40+ treaties? This is certainly not in the interest of average Bahamians who doesn't even know what a correspondent bank is. Maybe the perceptions in the recently released Poll that our leaders are more concerned with foreign interests is true?

http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstor…

Obviously this drivel is for local consumption or our financial leaders don't have a clue of the global program. Let me tell you one more time "unilateral" automated tax exchange treaties will not work. The Bahamas needs a "multilateral" automated tax exchange treaty, period.

This is not a negotiation, this is a demand from the eu, g20, fatf etc.

So, the PLP and FNM can continue to talk nonsense and get black listed again and have all the correspondent banks pull out of thee country or we can start to co-operate with western civilization.

Also, could you please update the corporate database and make accessing it more easy and less costly and more useful...dese G20 people look like dey ain playin doll house wit yinna.

OK, got it.

A double standard reflecting the breakdown in the rule of law. Its Ok for Fitzgerald to leak information in Parliament on Save the Bays and to flaunt a ruling by the Supreme Court ordering him not to disclose private information of Bahamian citizens and residents and not to further violate our newly minted Data Protection Act. But, on the other hand, its not Ok for the ICIJ to leak information on 175,000 Bahamian companies where a rogues list of international characters are stashing their ill gotten gains.

Lol...perhaps the National Intelligence Agency should investigate the ICIJ list to assist the G20 in their clamp down on international money laundering. Opps, they have no legislation so they are not sure what their mandate is, neither are their operations transparent to the Bahamian public. Just who are they mandated to investigate? Maybe a good time to utilize the NIA to victimize some Bahamians like in the olden days...better put on my yellow shirt.

OR, maybe the PLP will just put its head in the sand, cross their fingers and hope the whole thing just blows over like everything else in this country.

https://www.icij.org/offshore/former-eu…

Its worth taking the time to read the article from the ICIJ.org website link above.

One of the most damning insights from the article is that the Bahamian corporate registry database which can be searched online legally is not up to date. For us as Bahamian's this shouldn't come as a surprise. Indeed I would be shocked if the Bahamian Government could keep a database of 175,000 companies up to date with the names of all shareholders, directors, registered offices, shares issued etc. It is beyond our government's capacity. Lol...we can hardly keep the lights on much less the computers.

Of even greater embarrassment is that corporate details at the registry seem to be left off of companies used by high profile global persons. Global regulatory interrogation of the database is even more frustrated by a government cost of $10 for each page. But even if you searched the database legally it will give you nonsense in some instances because its not up to date.

Add the parts of the puzzle together including no automatic tax exchange treaty, a recalcitrant financial services industry and bad record keeping (by design, incompetence, gross negligence or worse) and you should not be surprised when we are black listed again. This time it will be ten times worse than the 2000 black listing. Correspondent banks will walk away to reduce their risk of exposure to the Bahamas. The quasi regulated web shop industry banking through the BoB with the stated aim of the Central Bank to assimilate the industry into the financial system isn't constructive.

We as a country need to reverse course. Sadly the plp, fnm, dna and Independent Candidates don't even grasp the severity of our financial problems including spiraling government debt and crushing corporate taxes. I think its may be beyond their intellectual capacity...they just don't know that they don't know, neither do they recognize that there is a larger problem...so it is impossible for them to resolve the issue. The G20 will sort them out.