How big was the revenue loss for the government during the GST free weekends back in December? The projection was that it would be five million dollars - but one month later, the PM says they've not calculated the exact amount just yet, but, whatever it is, he believes it was worth it and. But we challenged him about maintaining a fine balance in the revenue basket while at the same time surrendering the tax revenue:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I haven't gotten the numbers but I believe that we did exceedingly well, why do I say that? Because whilst we gave up the GST for those two weekends, people did not go to Chetumal, people did stayed here to buy. Secondly, it alerted us to some of the people that aren't really paying the right GST so we've been going after them and working on it and thirdly I think it gave us a sense of good feeling during the Christmas season and so it was successful beyond what we expected and we do believe that it is something that we're going to be doing in December this year."
Jules Vasquez:
"But were you trying buy off the electorate?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Mr Cynical, it has nothing to do with the elections, it's simply something that we believe its time has come. We could not have done it earlier because we were just trying to recover and rebuild and regain the confidence of our citizens and of the private sector so now we felt, when that idea came up, we said you know what, it's not a bad idea, it's a good idea and to be able to build on it so if it was just the elections we would have only done it last year and we weren't going to do it this year but this is something that we believe we should do every year."
Jules Vasquez:
"Is it fair to increase the hotel tax when you're saying that we need to reset the revenue loss from the PAYE threshold raising, great, so we need to reset that because the revenue basket needs to remain stable."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"It needs to go up."
Jules Vasquez:
"It needs to go up, okay, growing population, growing country. So I'm saying that you're telling the hotel people well we need to get more in tax, we need to raise the hotel tax to be more in line with the rest of the region, that's fine. However are you sending mixed messages by saying oh but in December we'll forsake 5 million minimum revenue when we hope to raise 9 million through hotel taxes, let's say."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I do believe that the tourism industry needs to pay their fair share, we have invested tens of millions of dollars into the tourist industry and we the tax payers have paid for it, when you put infrastructure development and the beach development and the marketing, just name it. So now it's time that this industry is been growing and been growing fastest, we're the fastest growing, Belize tourism, in the region, and so now we've done all of that investment, I think it's only fair to be able to get back some of that money that we can then give the relief to the people who need it the most which is the lower middle class, we want to build the lower middle class and we've been saying it all the while we want to reduce or eventually if we can eliminate the PAYE or remove it and just keep it in the higher upper brackets, 50, 70 thousand dollars, that would be ideal for me."
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