Deputy is right to be calling for ‘fairness’ in the tax system

One of the key factors affecting the island’s future and economic prosperity is the changing demographic of the population. As more of us age and the size of young families shrink, the proportion of the population working and paying taxes is shrinking. It is therefore vital that everything the States does is designed to retain as many of our own young people as we can and attract outside talent for our critical revenue-producing industries and sectors such as education, hospitality, care, and even property maintenance. We will not achieve that if we allow our politicians to keep introducing measures that increase the cost of living.

Heidi Soulsby is also quite right to be calling for ‘fairness’ in the tax system. At the moment a disproportionate burden is falling on the general population, while the corporate sector and wealthy individuals are able to avoid paying their fair share. This is not only unfair, but is one of the reasons why the tax burden for the general population is so high, making it difficult to retain our own young folk and to attract others from outside.

It is time to rebalance this situation and nothing that P&R has put forward does this.

The OECD will soon force us to change our corporate tax system to a more honest model. We should be working with Jersey and the Isle of Man to come up with a new fairer model.

Please deputies, do not let the current P&R proposals go through.

MIKE TIDD

La Retraite

Ruette Rabey

St Martin’s