The other side of the GST debate
IT WAS inevitable that GST was going to come back on the table. As Deputy Lyndon Trott’s 2p on income tax appears to lose currency by the day, the mitigations and the ‘fairness’ built in to the ultimately-rejected GST package is poised to come back into play.
Deputy Peter Roffey has a point when he talks about the thought and care taken to structure a package that was ‘fair’ or at least, not regressive. Meanwhile a proposal to slap a couple of pence on income tax came up as a last-minute amendment last year and was roundly rejected.
He makes a fair argument that this would be a ‘permanent’ solution to public finances, rather than a two-year sticking plaster.
And he is right too when he says ‘the argument that we don’t need to do anything substantial to revenue is gradually coming more and more into disrepute’.
But that is where a proposed amendment from Deputy Mark Helyar comes in. Yes, there is a growing acceptance on the need to raise income, but that will never be fully accepted by the public until the size, scope and future direction of the public sector is also reconfigured.
The steady creep of becoming an island where more people work for the people than work to raise revenue to pay for those people seems unstoppable.
Tackling that is the other side of this debate that needs to be picked up.