Selling used cars in Belize is one of the most booming enterprises - but when Customs proposed a straight and narrow procedure that would limit the breaks on duty for the dealers, and increase the revenue to government, the dealers cried foul.
And so today those dealers staged a protest where they briefly blocked the northern border to protest the new regulation.
The issue is that Customs wants the duties assessed on used cars to be based on the "transaction value" and not the residual or book value, which will force them to pay more duty. That would also likely make those used car and salvage title specials more expensive.
Today one of the dealers, Albert Leslie, spoke to our colleagues at CTV3
Albert Leslie, Registered Car Dealer
"Well, what happened is that the government, they are charging us a different type of duty. They used to do a residual duty and the vehicles that we bring in. No, they don't want to do any residual duty."
"They just want to evaluate direct off the bill of sale. And the vehicles that used to pay like $3,000, $4,000 in duty now will pay $8,000 in duty. But I don't know why they are bringing pressure on the poor people like that."
"Because the poor people is the one who is going to suffer. Because now, you will can't poor people cars. Because people only have certain amount of money to buy a car, okay? So when I came into the country yesterday, I get the news that the government, they will do direct with bill of sale, no residual duty."
"So that's what some of us are concerned about. Today, they put us out the compound because they said they thought we were going to do a ruckus in there. But we are not going to do any ruckus in the compound."
"All I was telling the dealers them, so that we don't pay any duty today. So that the government understand that we need help. We can't afford to pay the duty that they're charging us. I would like them to put it back the same way it was before."
"But you know, word on the street is that the pressure is coming down from the government because of the big car dealers like Toyota and all of these big car dealers in Belize. They are complaining that they are not selling their vehicle, right?"
"So we don't have anything to do with that. We need to make our money so that we can survive. Well, we know it will not be solved today. But I am trying to get the dealers together so we can go to Belmopan and go and see the Prime Minister, see if he can do something about it for us. It's not a problem, you know, if the government want one blue title and the street of Belize, well let me explain something to you. There's a lot of blue title coming into this country that is more wreck than the salvage title."
"So the title don't have anything to do with it because in the United States, the great United States, you can take a salvage title and rebuild it and drive it on the streets of the United States."
"So it doesn't have to do with that, it's got to do with the pressure that they want to bring on poor people."
Well, the protest worked. This evening, dealers got word that - based on a Cabinet decision - the new regulation is being pulled back - for the time being at least.
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