Absence of GST should be an attractive flower in Guernsey’s buttonhole
I READ with utter incredulity that this States has voted to introduce GST into Guernsey in 2027, even if by kicking this can down the road for a future States Assembly. My incredulity is that this should be contemplated at all by Guernsey at a time when the public is shrieking for its government to stop wasting money, stop employing more and more expensive civil servants, cut its expenditure and stop imposing unfruitful financial burdens on islanders.
GST is acknowledged to be just about the most inefficient tax you can ever levy, because of its unproductive costs before you even begin to gain positive revenue. It is not simple to collect on any basis, and it will immediately take an army of additional civil servants, in an already over-manned civil service (now still receiving their automatic annual increments, moreover) to organise collection of it. It imposes additional cost burdens on businesses, which are then passed on to their customers, as well as the GST itself. Its complications, (more associated costs) inevitably increase beyond anything predicted, as no doubt well-meaning folk argue for exemptions for this, that and the other. It stifles the growth of small businesses and if exemptions for these are introduced this not only complicates costly administration yet further, but distorts competition. It encourages avoidance, by people looking for loopholes, and even for outright evasion in an unholy black economy. How do you apply it economically and fairly to on-line shopping, or to hedge veg?
Even worse, once profligate and economically illiterate politicians get hold of such a powerful tool to feed their addiction to spending other people’s money, it will be the lever of immediate choice for the lazy ratcheting up of the rate.
The argument that ‘everyone else does it’ is pathetic; the absence of such a wasteful tax should be an attractive flower in Guernsey’s buttonhole, not a reason to follow an expensively exploited herd of lemmings.
Those who demand that Guernsey cuts its expenditure bill, and demands more efficiencies of its highly-paid and over-generously pensioned civil servants before it squeezes yet another kind of tax out of islanders, are right.
I give just one example. I am aware of several folk who tell me that they have not yet paid income tax for several previous years, not because they are avoiding it, but because they have never been sent any assessment against which to pay even though they have asked for one! And of course, this is still being blamed on Covid.
Guernsey really must start spending our money more wisely and efficiently, in particular by creating a leaner and more productive civil service, before exposing us all to such an unprofitable tax as GST.
HARVEY MARSHALL
St Saviour’s