Keep up the fight against these lazy, cancerous tax plans

The people of Guernsey, with their live and let live nature, who assume the States will be fair to them, are about to be lumbered with some of the most outrageously unfair taxes.

These taxes must surely have been dreamt up by someone without the brains of a small, hairy caterpillar. Presumably by the same hairy caterpillar brains that dreamt up zero-10, which has destroyed the major source of tax income for the States and has caused a cancerous metastasis of hidden charges and unfair tax hikes ever since.

Surely, I hear you say, our politicians and civil servants wouldn't just blindly copy the worst from other jurisdictions. They most surely would, because the easy path is always the most tempting to lazy politicians and lazy civil servants. And we seem to have some of those.

There are probably no taxes that are welcomed, but our taxes should be raised in as efficient a way as possible so that the taxes raised are not frittered away in complicated new systems of collection and are attributed in as fair a way as possible to minimise the burden imposed on those least able to pay.

In an earlier letter to the Guernsey Press I applauded the rare example of a 'good' tax (if kept reasonable), that placed the road fund licence onto the cost of fuel for vehicles. Though initially it caused some concerns, it has proved to be good because it uses an existing collection system so it is effectively cost-free (my favourite price). It proportionally charges more for those using their vehicles more and by costing more for those with large or inefficient engines, it rewards those who choose to be 'green' in their future car purchases and use.

It also, at a stroke, has confounded all those who used to cheat the system and avoid paying their road tax. Cheating, by driving around with an out-of-date tax disc or 'tax in post' signs in the windscreen, (remember them?) has thankfully become consigned to the past. The States, later, hiked up the rate of 'petrol tax'. This hike was to be in place of paid parking.

The States voted for this hike to enable them to forever do away with the need for an unfair, expensive to administer, paid-parking tax. Please remember that we are already paying for parking in our petrol costs when the States, again and again, try to foist this nonsense on us when this lunatic additional parking tax is next passed round the loop by our laziest politicians with delusions of a car-free world.

The only fair criteria for any tax is to base it on an individual's (or business's) spendable income, ideally with some link to the use of States-provided facilities. Any flat-rate, blanket tax on the people of Guernsey that disregards these criteria could only be described as unfair. When such a flat-rate, blanket tax involves substantial costs in its administration and/or collection, it is not only unfair, it is also utterly stupid.

No doubt aided and abetted by the civil servants, (who seem to wield far to much influence on policy while at the same time enabling our politicians to sidestep legitimate questions about maladministration with the universal 'get out of jail free' quote of: 'I cannot answer that, it's an operational matter') the States are thinking about subjecting the people of Guernsey to two of the most unfair and costly to administer (and thus utterly stupid) taxes they have yet dreamt up.

In truth, I don't think they even bothered to dream up these themselves but are just copying the stupid ideas of other stupid jurisdictions.

The States (and/or civil servants) probably keep using other jurisdictions' ideas because they don't want to put their own heads above the parapet with something radically new and unusual – like being fair or economical with our money.

The bad taxes about to hit you that you must protest to your States members about now, if you are to stand any chance of stopping them, are:

1. VAT (to be renamed GST here in Guernsey to make it seem a less cancerous tax) will add a tax cost together with an administration cost to all purchases, no doubt having a low percentage to start with and having some exemptions for a few items to fool you that it's not really going to be all that bad – but be assured, it will be all that bad, later (ask a Crapaud). VAT/GST, like all flat-rate taxes, will hammer the less well paid, the elderly suffering on our pitiful local pensions (unless they were civil servants), those struggling on benefits (most really are deserving of our help) and our tourists – are there still some? However, surprise, surprise, VAT/GST probably will hardly impact much on overpaid, junketing politicians, civil servants, financiers or other merchant bankers. Perhaps if it did impact adversely on them, more thought would go into the tax proposals and hidden charges they foist on us and our tourists. This tax will further tighten the screw on our fast-vanishing local shops by pushing yet more Guernsey people to purchase from Amazon, eBay and the like. Large, limited company businesses, like most of our supermarkets, nationals, multinationals and large distributors, already have a 20% advantage over small local shops and companies because the large limited companies, due to the 'utterly wonderful zero-10', pay no corporation tax into Guernsey's coffers, leaving us local suckers to pick up the shortfall. Who in God's name thought that one up? Is the finance industry and big business the tail wagging the dog?

I certainly think so.

2. Paid parking (parking tax) is the other cancerous, unfair tax, also involving great cost in its collection and policing, so it, too, falls into the 'utterly stupid' category. Paid parking, like VAT/GST, is a flat-rate, blanket tax that will, again, impact greatly on the less well paid, the elderly on pensions, those struggling on benefits and our increasingly rare tourists. However, surprise, surprise, paid parking probably won't impact much on any overpaid, junketing politicians, civil servants, financiers or other merchant bankers who generally already have free parking provided for them (Bagpuss excepted. He, of course, shouldn't vote on paid parking, as he doesn't drive). Any 'parking tax' will, of course, further tighten the screws on our fast-vanishing local shops and push us all to purchase more from Amazon, eBay and the like. Large limited companies like supermarkets will be unaffected as most have their own parking. They will, of course, also have that 20% price advantage over small, non-limited-company, local shops and businesses due to the States' 'wonderful gift to all struggling islanders' of the, totally, utterly, completely stupid, zero-10. (Gee, thanks lots Laurie et al involved in the States and the finance industry who set that one up.) This further destruction of local businesses will wipe out any perceived gains from parking tax revenue because it will further reduce tourist numbers (who are already outraged by a discriminatory bus fare system), raise unemployment, thus reducing local tax and income tax take from fewer shops, lose landlords' income tax take from fewer shops etc., etc. It will also push yet more islanders away from local shops to buy from the web and the (mostly foreign owned and thus foreign tax-paying) supermarkets and large distributors whose parking is conveniently close and free. Parking tax will not provide any extra parking spaces; indeed, if anything it will remove some.

Both of these proposed taxes should be permanently consigned to the scrapheap of duff ideas (together, perhaps, with some of our junketing States members and higher paid civil servants who proposed them). Instead, more careful thought must be given to fiscal policies by the good States members and civil servants who truly care about this island and its people – I know that such States members and civil servants really do still exist.

Sadly, unless enough people shout 'no', these unfair taxes will quietly slip through or go round the loop again and again until the people who were prepared to put their heads above the parapet and shout 'no' the first time get weary and let ill-conceived proposals slip through unopposed later. So you see, ill-conceived taxes and States proposals that harm locals don't just die; they go round and round the loop until the attentive islanders get tired of protesting. Please, all of you stay attentive and protest to your States members.

Why do we have poor government seemingly partly peopled by the spoilt rich at the moment who seem comfortable to let laws unfair to islanders pass largely unhindered and who seem willing to hand over the reins to let the island be run by a civil service? Our civil service seems to have little long-term local understanding, seems too well trained in the British system of pyramid paid management, seems overstaffed and overpaid at the top.

I never expected our States to keep passing laws, raising taxes and hiking charges that are so unfair and detrimental to the majority of local people. I never thought I'd start agreeing with most of Digard and Forty and (bits of) Roffey and Waterman. Wow. How bad must things have got!

Come on islander States members and civil servants, Guernsey people deserve better than this. Start by having the courage to admit that zero-10 has been an unmitigated disaster for locals, then improvements for the majority of islanders will follow.

NICK MACPHAIL

• extracted from the States of Guernsey accounts for 2012 under ‘Senior Employees Gross Cost Analysis’.