GOVERNMENT’S PLAN to raise $14 million from increased tax on cellphone services is very likely to fail.
This was the view of the president of the Barbados Economic Society (BES), Jeremy Stephen, who told the SUNDAY SUN that the financial target was based on an ill-conceived analysis.
“It just seems as if [Government] knew how many airtime minutes in data were downloaded and they said, ‘Well look, let’s add an additional [4.5 per cent] and see how much more VAT we can get from that,” he said, noting that they failed to consider the spending behaviours of consumers in Barbados.
Stephen proposed that, instead, it would have been necessary to assess how many people purchased each type of data package to get a sense of what the consumers were willing to pay.
Please read the full story in today’s Sunday Sun, or in the eNATION edition.
