Experience is a reason for concern
JERSEY deputy Sam Mezec has been right on the outside of the island’s politics and in the inner sanctum too.
Now essentially a chief scrutineer of policy, he’s probably well-placed, if rather sceptically so, to offer thoughts about that island’s introduction of a goods and services tax on the back of Jersey introducing the zero-10 corporate tax reforms of 2008.
In one word, he says GST has been a ‘failure’. His reasons display fair warning for the Guernsey public.
Two concessions were made for the Jersey public, Deputy Mezec wrote – GST would be low at 3%, and a ‘food cost bonus’ would be introduced to offset the regressive impact of GST on the poorest households.
‘What followed was years of everything that we were promised would not happen happening anyway,’ he said. ‘GST failed to achieve any of what we were told it was essential we introduced it for.’
And that is (some of) the Guernsey public’s great fears. That the ameliorations to the package get quickly lost, the GST rate goes up, and the local public are squeezed in a new way for ever more.
On this matter, more than any other in local politics, trust is so important. There will be no going back. And when politicians are already admitting that they can’t bind their political successors, voters will be right to be concerned.