The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

NOTWITHSTANDING your editorial accolades for our Prime Minister today, I have to ask if he is playing with a full hand when he proffers the thought that we need a “hurricane tax” now.

Taxes, of course, bring revenue into the Government coffers, but profligate spending, such as this Government is wont to do, pays it away faster than it can be collected.

It is not necessary to list the litany of misspent and stolen money, as that is now a matter of public and historic record, but it seems to me that if Mr Christie were simply to put a bridle on this reckless and wasteful spending, we very likely would not even need VAT.

Most people don’t even stop to think that the tax base, in this country, is not simply the 350,000 to 400,000 people who live here but it also includes, in one degree or another, the many millions of tourists who visit this country every year. They pay duty on whatever they buy here, and VAT now as well. So, yes we have a massive tax base, yet, because of our government’s abysmal management of its tax revenues, we are facing financial collapse and our credit rating destruction.

How many miles of underground electric cabling could we have done with the $20m blown and lost on two Carnival failures? We don’t even know what, or on whom, it was wasted.

If only even a few of our Government members could experience the human emotion of shame we would all be that much better off.

BRUCE G RAINE

Nassau

October 18, 2016