‘Important to show deputies that public won’t roll over on GST’
A PROTEST walk against GST is being organised to try to send a strong message to politicians about concerns over the suggested tax.
Policy & Resources has been undertaking a tax review, with drop-ins and an online question session, in a bid to get the public’s ideas about how more revenue could be raised to help balance the island’s books.
A consistent message from the public at the drop-ins has been that they do not want to follow Jersey and have a goods and services tax.
But worries remain that it will form part of a new tax system.
Nearly 2,000 people have joined the Guernsey People Against GST Facebook group.
Now 44-year-old retail assistant and Facebook group admin Dan Ogier is helping to organise the GST protest walk.
He said he had been to a drop-in, but said it felt like a ‘sales pitch’ for GST.
He hoped the walk would help get their message across.
‘I think it’s important we be seen,’ he said. ‘I think the politicians think we are quite benign as a community. That we will just sit back and take what they dish out.’
He felt that having the public come out in force would help politicians realise the scale of concerns.
He accepted that more money needed to be found, but felt it would be better to restructure the existing system with income tax and social security rather than create a new tax.
He said that a GST would be effectively taxing people to live.
‘I am a realist,’ he said. ‘I believe taxes have to go up, but we should not have three different taxes.’
The debate on the tax review has now been postponed to later in the year, but Mr Ogier said he and fellow organisers thought it was better to hold the walk over the summer months.
It is proposed that the march will start from Bulwer Avenue at 10am on Sunday 5 June, along the seafront to the Weighbridge clock tower.
