Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur plans to take action on behalf of the poor in his St Peter constituency against Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler for the imposition of the Municipal Solid Waste Tax.
Speaking at Sunday’s Barbados Labour Party (BLP) St Joseph branch meeting at Grantley Adams Memorial School, Arthur pointed to Section 5 of the Municipal Solid Waste Tax Act and a provision that states that “if the minister is satisfied on the grounds of undue hardship or for any other reason that it would be just and equitable to do so, he may remit or refund the whole or any part of the tax imposed under this act”.
He said he would therefore use his constituency office to assemble all who owned “house and sheds”, all pensioners and others who would have benefited from the reverse credit on land tax under the former administration, and send the matter to the minister’s desk to make sure he was faithful to Section 5 of the act.
Calling it a “most pernicious piece of bankrupt and backward legislation”, Arthur said those in the BLP must “stop talking and start doing”, and urged other Opposition MPs to follow his example in their constituencies.
“I cannot now agree with dragging pensioners into the tax net; it is wrong!, he said, adding that Government had to give the economy a chance to heal instead of taxing it repeatedly.
Opposition MP Kerrie Symmonds also blasted the contentious new tax slated to start July 28, recalling that Sinckler was seeing companies collapsing like ninepins while the Value Added Tax and land tax hikes had failed to increase revenue, but the minister had continued to impose more taxes.
Comparing Sinckler to the hated tax collector Zaccheus in the biblical book of Luke, he said the Municipal Solid Waste Tax was unconscionable and described it as “a rod of severity”.
Symmonds urged Barbadians to think rationally instead of perpetuating a “blind loyalty to George Street”, and accused Sinckler of dragging pensioners into the tax net and asking those who had benefited under the Tenantry Freehold Purchase Act to now pay a municipal tax.
“This tax offends me,” Symmonds said, noting that Government was not penalising those leaving their empty overrun plots as havens for rodents and vermin but was placing a tax penalty on those who were doing the right things such as developing their properties.
The tax of 0.3 per cent of the site value of improved land is to be paid by owners of residential and commercial properties. (RJ)