Dear Editor,
I am sure that MP Lenox Shuman is sincere and well-intentioned in his support of the call for the government to remove the taxes from the 7% increase announced for public servants. It is not a call I can support. Not because I do not think that the public servants are deserving of more, but rather because of my concerns for the broader meaning and impact of the issue. The first is that Mr. Shuman is indirectly supporting the imposition of a wage increase in place of a constitutionally and statutorily guaranteed right – as well as a violation of the agreement between the workers’ representatives and their employer – to free collective bargaining. This is not the right thing to do. Indeed, to sell a constitutional right for a tax benefit is actually worse than it sounds.
My second concern is that we need to stop messing with the tax system either by piecemeal and half-baked amendments, by discriminatory preferences like we saw with the recent exemption from corporation tax for private medical and educational facilities, or in the extreme case, by edicts from the political directorate, as is now being suggested. Mr. Shuman may not be aware that only a couple weeks ago, the High Court ruled that the amendment to the Income Tax act allowing for exempting the income of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice from income tax was unconstitutional (on grounds of discrimination) and unlawful. The right way is for the Government to gross up the payment so as to allow the agreed net sum to be paid to the workers. By following this procedure, the law is complied with, no improper precedent is created, and importantly, that level can serve as a benchmark for the rest of the economy. For good measure, there is no loss of revenue since the tax goes straight back to the Consolidated Fund.
Let us do the right thing. And let us do it the right way.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
