Posted By: Phillip On: 6/8/2010

Title: Seek Extradiction

What the Gov of the Bahamas should do is request that the US government turn those business owners over to Bahamian officials for facilitating fraud against the Bahamas government if they issue false recipts/invoices to bahamians importing goods. Let's see how fair the extradiction treaty is.

Posted By: Erasmus Folly On: 6/7/2010

Title: Tax Reform

Income tax is not sustainable in this country. You cannot convince Bahamians to 'disclose' their funds to the authorities in full. It won't happen, neither the rich nor the poor will be honest. VAT is complex enough as it is. That might be achievable, but even VAT is tough. The best would be a business savvy duty regime combined with 'intelligent' stamp taxes on service transactions, whether they be at restaurants, banks, bars, real estate companies or hotels. We have to think practically first and foremost when it comes to the taxation regime and we need to pick something that we can adapt and tweak as we need and as we go along in an intelligent way, that works for both the business community, the citizens and the government.

Posted By: BAHAMIANSNEEDTOCHANGE On: 6/5/2010

Title: Abolish cutoms

I do not think it makes sense to charge customs duty. We should just implement an across-the-board flat tax rate (tiered by income per household) for the very poor. t most if each were charged a 2 to 5 percent income tax, that would go a long way. I think it is also inhumane to charge people property tax, when they already pay a tax to the goverment when you buy the property. The government does not help you maintain your private property, or fix the pipes when they are broken, or the roof if it leaks, so why should you charge a man for the rest of life to live on his own private property, that most people take a lifetime to get, let along work to pay back these greedy banks when they charge you extortion interest rates, and make tons of money off the poor man! God help us all, lest greed will find us once again in this same Financial Crisis! BTW it is time some government take the stand and clean up all those shameful, efficient government offices. Who the cap fit let them wear it!

Posted By: John Abrams On: 6/3/2010

Title: Customs

Govt needs to get real and abolish the archaic and many customs sources altogether and replace it with fewer, narrower and more controllable sources such as gas supplied through what I think is 3 gas companies of Esso, Texaco and Shell. This way, fraud and other gross abuses will be minimized or eliminated, while the Government maximizes its revenues. Simple enough but it will never happen. Pay existing Customs Officers out and let them go home and find something else to do. Oh, and that Automated System Hubert Ingraham is talking about? It will never work. They tried it before and had a litany of problems, and was eventually phased out, and you guessed it, replaced by its current manual system yet again where the "dumb" Customs Officer of an average IQ of -5, tries to play as if they are authorities on all products imported, moreso than merchants who work with them everyday and in many cases end up overcharging them. Try getting your money back and it will take forever. The Bahamas is a backward aspiring 3rd world country, currently in 4th world status where everything is wrong with it, led by stupid politicians who do things by counting political cost and short term gain rather than what is in the best interest of the country. Bahamian's need to rise up against this crew, especially the FNM and PLP. They should be kicked off of this planet. They are both sickening. Ohh, one other point, the automated system will never work because Government NEVER maintains or is extremely slow to upgrade anything. When the system goes down, merchants suffer and must further tolerate the almost "God like" and STINKING attitudes of those DUMB customs officers. GET RID OF CUSTOMS. It's annoying.

Posted By: Erasmus Folly On: 6/3/2010

Title: Duty, Government and Corruption

This country has lost somewhere between 25 million and 100 million per annum over the last 10 years, I would venture as an educated guess. That includes both duties not collected at the commercial docks and the commercial airports and duties not collected during personal imports, both at the dock, at the airport, via private boats and private planes. To any rational person who grew up here, it is obvious that the fraud happens at all points of the process, but what is shocking is that there have been zero investigations on the customs officers who were dismissed a few months ago and those who were 'dismissed' or 'retired' over the years. There was a lot of fraud between brokers and customs officers for example, where the private sector, busy running their companies had no idea and never got any follow up from customs for years. People need to realize that if the customs people were doing their jobs, the possibility of that happening should have been zero. It happened though...
The government is living in lalaland if it thinks it can impose high duties on medium priced consumer items that are portable. Let's take a Laker's or Celtic's jersey as an example. We can't make those here, by definition. A Laker's or Celtic's jersey has an automatic duty of 35% on it. So, if it costs a US company $20 at wholesale to buy that jersey, it costs a Bahamian company trying to sell the same jersey $27, before it has even entered the store. That means, the US company can sell the jersey at regular mark up for about $40, but the Bahamian company has not choice but to sell the jersey for at least $54, in order to make full retail. Now, a Bahamian, going to buy a Laker's or Celtic's jersey, knows that he/she can buy it stateside for $40, wear it once in Miami and then bring it in as 'used clothing'. There is no custom's officer in the world who would stop them. The reality is, Bahamian companies are forced to sell to only about 60% - 70% of the Bahamian market - the ones who don't travel often really or the serious impulse shoppers. Prudent consumers, which Bahamians have shown themselves to be, will simply buy it in Miami. So, not only do we LOSE customs revenue from fraud, but we lose custom's revenue because the government actually FAVOURS the Miami business with its silly tax structure. If government lowered duties to something practical, then we wouldn't be losing 30 or 40% of our GDP to Florida in lost sales. Lost sales is lost jobs people! Every item bought in Miami is one less potential Bahamian employed in Nassau or another island. Until the government of this country understands that economics is fundamental and primal and cannot simply be ignored, then this country will not improve its economy. Blame Ingraham all you want, but if you vote in the other guy, it will only get worse, not better. Ingraham is doing what he has to do based on the existing situation, I praise him for that, but he is failing miserably when it comes to overhauling the structural deficiencies of this economy. Our government is literally preventing growth by holding on to archaic and artificially high duty rates. If it lowered duties, we would actually have more business. You can't do that in a 'crunch', I get that, but it has to be the long term vision. If we can do this, increase our food self-reliance and get off of oil, then this country will have an amazingly robust and strong economy. Until that day, we can play ring around the rosies with PLP first, then FNM, then PLP, then FNM and we can blame each other til kingdom come, but nothing will get better and nothing will change!
Back to government corruption, how is it that you have officers who were making publicly gazetted and known salaries, but who drive in a Mercedes Benz, own 2 homes in the Bahamas and a property in Florida, and have all their kids in private school? Why aren't these obvious instances of fraud investigated? What is wrong with our country? The PM loves to bully the private sector, but he hasn't properly gone after the fraud at custom's itself. He might now, but don't bully the private sector exclusively in the process. Believe me, the private sector in this country is always swimming up stream. Government corruption, government inefficiency and general government incompetence make getting anything done here a monumental task. General Bahamian behaviour, lack of skills, lack of communication skills and general lack of knowledge make running companies here a major head ache. How does the PM intend to fix this? The private sector pays the lions share of the Bahamas gov's revenue via duties, yet the ungrateful government blames the private sector for the problems, when their corrupt officers, ridiculously high duty rates (we might be low tax, but we are NOT low duty and that means import based companies are heavily taxed here) and archaic procedures at customs created the environment where outright theft of government funds was the obvious result. Where were the proper checks and balances? Where was the oversight? The government is a far bigger part of this problem than people in this country seem to realize. If you don't prosecute government agents who are obviously corrupt but simply 'transfer' them or 'retire' them or 'dismiss' them, then where is the accountability? Has anyone looked into the finances of the ex-comptrollers of customs or his/her senior agents over the last few years that were dismissed? Has the Tribune? It's easy to blame the private sector, everyone loves to blame 'big business', but the truth in the Bahamas is, this place is held together by the business community, not the government. The government fails the people far more than the business community ever could. The private sector provides REAL jobs. The government lies to its people by hiring them in FAKE jobs. Long term, who has the real interests of the country at heart? That's probably too deep for the average Bahamian, but then again... that is how LOP and those who thought like him, whether FNM or PLP, wanted their Bahamian people to be... right?! What does the bible say about reaping and sowing again...