Her comment followed a claim by Rob Curgenven that the amount that could be raised by implementing GST was between £9m. and £15m. lower than the £41m. that the senior committee had claimed.
Deputy Curgenven said he had used the latest results from the 2023-24 household expenditure survey, published recently by the States, and applied the committee’s published GST treatments and its own inflation path in order to reach his conclusion. In an email to Deputy Curgenven, Deputy de Sausmarez said it looked as if he had used median household income figures rather than the mean, and had not included Alderney.
‘Also, our actual tax receipts over the period that the HES covers are a more accurate indication of aggregate income and potential tax revenues, so they are a better source of income data to use in any analysis,’ she said.
But Deputy Curgenven said he did use the correct figures. And while he said he would be happy to see the committee’s adjusted total incorporating Alderney figures, he felt that any resulting adjustments would prove ‘immaterial’.
Deputy de Sausmarez said that Deputy Curgenven did not need to go to the trouble of updating the calculations.
‘We are – as I thought we’d already confirmed, but maybe not widely enough – currently re-running the analysis using the latest data, which we will share as soon as it is available,’ she wrote in an email exchange.
Deputy Curgenven took to The People’s Trust page on Facebook to publish his calculations.
‘I remain of the view that the original £41m. household GST estimate, based on the 2018/19 survey, needs to be reconciled with the real terms fall in expenditure and income shown in the 2023-24 survey, and with the absence of any explicit behavioural or leakage adjustment,’ he said.
‘I am glad the committee is now updating the analysis.’
Debate on the tax reform report started in the States last month and is due to restart on 30 September.