| And that tax elimination talk is just what middle class voters want to hear. So, is the PM strictly using his state platform to play politics with an election year approaching?
And is he relieving tax on one side of the revenue equation - only to get it back on the other?
He denied that - saying that the tax break is a reflection of enhanced revenue:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"No, absolutely not. We said it from earlier and that that is something that we want to do, that we want to be able to see how we could give relief to the middle class. And the middle class are the ones that are paying these taxes."
"And so this is just the first step. Remember, I need to remind you, when we got into government, we got a bankrupt government. I mean, we were borrowing a million dollars a day. So there's no way we could have afforded this."
"So we had to make sure that we can grow the economy and when you see that our economy has gone from less than four billion in 2020 to over six billion dollars now, it shows that there has been tremendous growth."
"Now we have to ensure that we collect the taxes and then by doing that, then we could continue to give more and more relief to our citizens. It comes to effective January 1st of 2025, because the tax regime goes from January to December, government financials start from April to March, but taxes go from January to December. So it will start in January."
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