Deputy Mark Helyar was treasury lead for the Policy & Resources Committee for most of the last political term. In response to the findings of the current committee’s corporate tax sub-committee, released this week, he said he was not at all surprised to see it conclude that there are no better options for raising revenue than GST-plus.
Deputy Helyar pointed out that there were few hidden options when it comes to taxation and claimed the latest findings just confirmed everything he had been saying between 2020 and 2023.
The former treasury lead said that if Guernsey did end up embracing GST-plus, then all that the delays will have achieved is several years of lost income at £50m. a year.
However Deputy Helyar, now president of the States Trading Supervisory Board, said there were even more important decisions facing the States than reforming its tax system.
‘I’m more strongly of the view that we need significant changes to our government system and that these are probably more important than just raising money. I said way back in 2021 that GST was the answer to the wrong question – which is how do we right-size government and services to live with our means.
‘And that is something we still haven’t addressed in any meaningful way.’
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