The present income tax regime does not grant allowances for families

Dec 12, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Mr. Khurshid Sattaur in his letter to the Editor published December 03, 2009, danced around my argument on the right of parents to retain dependent allowances for their children who are minors. My letter containing the argument was published in the Stabroek News October 28, 2009.
Mr. Sattaur claims that the income tax threshold encapsulates and accounts for all allowances that were granted under the previous system. My perception after I read his letter is that Mr. Sattaur is now allowing himself to be trapped by psychological wrongness to hide the truth of an ill-conceived system which was approved and put in place by the PNC and PPP in the late 1980s.
If what was said by the Tax Chief is the truth, it means that he has simply provided me with an eye opener to the hidden wrongs of the state; because if a person is single and awarded an allowance of $1,150.00 a day which accounts for the current threshold, how reasonable is it to award that person that identical allowance when that person gets married and has six children to maintain from the same wages?
When the total members of the family stand at eight, with the same income tax threshold for the sole income generator of that family, then each family member is forced to survive on a share of $143.75 a day to cover their basic expenses. What Mr. Sattaur is saying indirectly is that the family has to share the $1,150.00 a day.
Could Mr. Sattaur advise me how to spend $143.75 a day for the basic expenses of one of my children when transportation cost to school alone is $300.00 day? Could Mr. Sattaur make public the various allowances of the past system that are now encapsulated in the current fixed tax threshold as he says? And could the Income Tax Chief declare the percentage of each one of the previous allowances as they fit into the fixed tax threshold so tax payers can know how much they can spend on each one of the allowances that are said to be encapsulated in the fixed tax threshold?
Is Mr. Sattaur saying that the $35,000 a month income tax threshold is just and reasonable for a family to cover their basic expenses? If this is so, then why is it that the GRA is paying its officers 28 times the threshold and government ministers are getting 12 times the threshold? Why pay them so much if the threshold is just? Or is it that the office worker is 28 times more important than the cane cutter who works hard in the hot sun.
A proper study has to be done to determine the true cost-of-living index in this country. We should not have an unjust system which takes away money from poor families to create overnight infrastructure development just for a show of progress, with the hope of gaining mileage to win another election while failing to provide for human resource and family development.
Secondly, Mr. Sattaur said that the government’s policy has always been and continues to be the alleviation of hardship faced by citizens through periodic revisions of the income tax ceiling. Is this really true? The government gives income tax relief with one hand and takes back several times the amount in VAT.
Mr. Sattaur also claims that billions are lost due to the increase of the income tax ceiling. How could the government lose what it would not have collected if a just system was in place? Or is Mr. Sattaur’s calculation based on an unjust system. I am calling on our people to join in the fight for your constitutional right to have dependent allowances before taxation on income.
Michael Carrington
AFC Region 4 Councillor

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News