President Lindsay de Sausmarez and her vice-president and treasury lead Gavin St Pier answered 25 questions over the course of a 90-minute Facebook Live event.
Most questions related to tax reform, but there were some questions about housing, mental health and a potential social media ban for under-16s.
‘It’s the first time this format has been tried,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘Apart from the first few questions to kick us off, we had no idea what was going to be thrown at us. There was a broad range of questions and the time flew by so fast we kept going for an extra half hour. It’s always great to engage and I’m sure we will be doing it again.’
The public made their views on tax reform clear, with questions such as ‘we are constantly asking you to curtail expenditure, when are you actually going to listen to the public and act in a way which will negate all this nonsense about tax reform?’
Deputy de Saumarez admitted that things could be done better and that this had been an ‘absolute solid focus’ for her committee since taking office in July.
She added that a lot of States spending was down to demographics and needs of the island’s ageing population.
‘27% of all States expenditure goes on Health & Social Care, add in pensions and long-term care that’s about 50% of all States expenditure right there,’ she said.
Deputy St Pier answered questions on whether tax banding as been considered as an alternative to a goods and services tax – he said that such an idea was not off the table – as well as questions about the backlog of tax rebates due.
‘Earlier in the year there was a backlog of about 6,000 repayments, of which about 4,700 have been dealt with,’ he said.
‘We acknowledge this is unacceptable and is taking far too long.’
Deputy de Saumarez added that the recent appointment of a director of operations at the Revenue Service was making a difference. That person was focused on getting to the bottom of the problem.
The implementation of GST also came up, with Deputy St Pier saying it would cost about £3.5m. to implement with an extra £1m. to support business implementation. Answering another question on whether GST will rise beyond 5% in the years to come, Deputy de Saumarez said that the committee and the States needed to ensure that 5% was not ‘the thin end of the wedge’.