Tag: Tax Reform

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Take from the Poor and Give to the Rich

Introduction
Perhaps not surprisingly the only feedback I received to last week’s column on tax evasion and tax avoidance was from persons who would generally be considered among the better off. And who want more from the society and the tax system because “they work hard, create jobs and have a choice.” Those comments are filled with arrogance, self-importance, self-interest and self-delusion. As though the stevedores, the public health workers, the cane-cutters and others do not work hard, or do not have a choice. They have a choice and that is why they daily flock the Passport Office in Camp Street from 5.30 AM for a passport to go to the Caribbean, North America, to anywhere, to work harder, to earn and to enjoy the fruits of their harder work.

In Guyana the tax system is heavily weighted against the poor and the commentator and columnist was only mildly exaggerating when he said that workers pay a total of 49% of their income in taxes – 33 1/3% income tax and 16% VAT. In fact that commentator forgot to mention the employees’ 5% NIS contribution which in public finance is a form of tax while the rough calculation of 49% ignores the range of zero-rated VAT items and the personal allowance of $35,000 per month. Overall however, the tax burden is very much around the 50% tax to GDP which makes Guyana one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world.

Soaking the Poor
Yet, for some reason there is no real commitment to tax reform about which we have been hearing since 1992. Tax reform is rat poison, for all practical purposes off the table, better understood by those who pay taxes than those who impose them. This is ironic, for some of the most important steps in the march to democracy involved taxation. The Boston Tea Party has to be given pride of place for its inspiration to the independence movement in the US and the iconic statement “no taxation without representation”. How can those of us who were around in the sixties, forget Peter D’Aguiar’s Axe the Tax Campaign when then Premier Dr. Cheddi Jagan sought to introduce a measure of tax reform? Ann Jardim, one of the leaders of the UF carefully ignored the introduction of new taxes but rallied the working class against a miniscule increase in the rate of the personal income tax. Today those who have followed her in the UF are part of the new scheme that takes from the poor to give to the rich, in taxes and state assets.

In the sixties, the political classes were on different sides of the political divide – a left-leaning government seeking to achieve a more equitable sharing of the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship by the trader and business class. Today while the ruling party may have vestiges of working class preferences, its Government seems beholden to the business class whose position of influence – whether at the head table at the Office of the President or at the Pegasus Poolside on Friday evenings – has come to be the defining feature of the Jagdeo Administration. We no longer hear about equity in the tax system, let alone the distinction between horizontal versus vertical equity. Indeed, any acceptance of the concept of tax reform by this Government is not out of conviction but out of a commitment made as a precondition to receive more and more gifts and grants from the donor community.

Stranglehold
Businesses’ stranglehold on the agenda is not peculiar to Guyana. The current wave of globalisation, driven first by the Reagan-Thatcher axis and adopted and sold by the international multilateral institutions across the developing world like snake oil salesmen of old, has witnessed a concentration of wealth and income and a widening of the socio-economic divide. The effect has been a corresponding increase in business’s ability to set the agenda for political discussion and its effective veto over public policy. In Guyana, under the agreements made by the Administration with the donor community any semblance of economic policy is driven by the National Competitiveness Council that is dominated by business interests rather than national interests. The NCC has been more successful at stalling in the interest of the status quo than at achieving any meaningful changes.

Recent research under President Bush revealed that elected officials tend to be unresponsive to the policy preferences of low-income citizens and that they disproportionately favour business interests and the wealthy in all areas of public policy. Like their counterparts in the US, those interests in Guyana also opt out or are favoured by a tax system set up in 1929 for the ruling plantation and trader class and only episodically reviewed subsequently for reform. Indeed, since 1929, there have been only two or three events that could qualify as tax reform and with only one being targeted at getting the rich to pay a fair share of the tax burden. The first of the reforms took place in the early sixties when Dr. Cheddi Jagan brought in Hungarian-born world-class economist and socialist thinker Professor Nicholas Kaldor, to overhaul the country’s tax system. Those reforms included the introduction of the Capital Gains Tax, the Property Tax and steeply progressive but at the highest end, counter-productive, marginal tax rates that went up to 75% from a base 5%.

Burnham and Hoyte
In 1970 the Burnham Administration enacted the Corporation Tax Act which introduced a separate regime of companies while incorporating over seventy sections of the Income Tax Act into the new Act. The next wave saw the abolition of dividend taxation and pensions, unification of the corporate tax rate, the abolition of the progressive income tax and the abolition of allowances – all pro-business and anti-worker in their effect. The PPP/C before President Jagdeo has the distinction of reversing the unification of tax rates and introducing the Minimum Corporation Tax on all, and then only on commercial, companies. Jagdeo has to his credit the immoral imposition of the 16% Value-Added Tax. Now, if tax evasion is illegal then we have to find a word for the imposition of a tax at a rate that is knowingly and admittedly excessive and wrong.

Barring one or two exceptions, every reform then has favoured the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of the poor. Here are some of the starkly contrasting provisions in the tax legislation.

1. Wages and salaries are fully taxed. Dividends are fully exempt.

2. Income from personal exertion is taxed at 33 1/3%. Capital gains and interest income are taxed at 20%.

3. The employer-provided vehicle, and sometimes more than one, driver(s) and security are fully exempt from tax. A travel allowance to the worker to help her defray the cost of getting from home to work is fully taxed.

4. The entertainment allowance paid to the executive is fully exempt; the meal allowance paid to the worker is taxable unless a strong case is made for it to a skeptical and uncompromising revenue officer who will claim that a meal is a private expense. As if entertainment does not include a high level of private benefit as well.

5. There is no limit to the pension that is tax-free. Most workers on retirement have to make do with under $20,000 per month. The retired top-executive receives hundreds of thousands tax free.

6. Overseas passage assistance – a throwback to the British planter class, is exempt for all but can only be enjoyed by those with spending power.

7. The working poor are taxed at source; the self-employed with all their benefits and concessions, can decide how much tax they want to pay.

8. There are ethnic and gender biases in the tax system that no one even wants to whisper, let alone acknowledge or debate.

9. The wage earner gets no deductions or allowances; business can deduct most expenses, whether it be the magazine or the business trip.

10. Duty and tax concessions favour those who have economic or political power over those who do not. Just look at the beneficiaries of the duty-free vehicles.

11. Businesses get tax holidays; their workers’ earnings are fully taxed.

12. The entrepreneur has a choice between taxable and tax-exempt business activities; the employee’s only choice is not to work.

No vision, no tax reform
The above, is a brief review of the relative position of the workers versus the executives and the “entrepreneur” under our tax laws. Those laws clearly cry out for reform. But then as the late Richard Musgrove, public finance specialist said, tax reform needs a clear and detailed vision of where we are going – a vision that is sadly lacking in President Jagdeo. That is why he could be so easily diverted to the LCDS as a tunnel-vision strategy for development and even as he heads CARICOM, could be completely sold on a Continental Destiny with neighbouring Brazil. If what he said in a recent speech he gave at a private function is to be believed, he is now looking to Brazil to help us with our rice industry even as his Government pumps $400 million in what by implication is an inefficient industry.

The cry for reform, no matter how compelling or loud, is unlikely to be heard or to win support from those of power within and influence without. A review I saw recently by a leading donor to the Guyana economy, actually praises the country’s fiscal performance, completely ignoring the tax burden that the citizens of the countries making up that donor would regard as completely unacceptable given the low level of public benefits available in Guyana. In many of those countries the entertainment allowance is now denied at the corporate level and in Australia the Keating Tax Reform Package dealt an effective blow at non-cash fringe benefits.

Conclusion
But at the domestic level there simply is no need or pressure for reform. With perhaps a single exception, the top tier of the opposition political parties has shown no interest in tax reform, confirming the view that there is no ideological or class difference among the political elites. Labour has been emasculated by personal interests and petty rivalry exploited by, again, the politically powerful while Ann Jardim’s successor is just another of that elite.

The Ministry of Finance has been depressingly slow at taking any initiatives in tax policies. It has left these to the tax administrators, a fundamentally flawed position – the two roles and functions being obviously different. We need lower rates of tax both on individuals and corporate, removing not the loopholes but the chasms that in some cases discount the nominal rate of tax by as much as 75%. We need a society in which the fiscal benefits and obligations are shared and borne fairly by all and in which relief must not be sought in tax evasion.

Similarly, the President has allowed elements in the private sector to hijack the social and economic debate including tax reform. If any progress is to be made, then the hijackers will have to be brought into line. Failing that, we are left with an inequitable and dysfunctional tax system, high tax rates and massive evasion. That is in no one’s interest.

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Question: What’s the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion?

Answer: the thickness of a prison wall

That is how the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, Denis Healey defined the two related practices but which have distinctly separate consequences. He was also tough on tax evasion and also said “It will squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.” The first quote in fact matches the general view on the contrasting level of permissibility of what others may call aggressive tax practices. Remember however that Mr. Healey made his statement decades ago. Internationally, things have changed since then and not only tax administrators but legislators and very importantly, the courts, certainly in the more advanced economies, are taking more direct action against aggressive tax practices.

It may in fact be due to Bush’s War on Terror targeting not only those who pulled the trigger or threw the bomb but those who financed those who pulled the trigger or threw the bomb. The evidence is that the coordinated and sustained efforts to contain domestic tax evaders and the tax haven jurisdictions that have for decades facilitated them are yielding significant results. As one international tax specialist wrote recently, “the seemingly endless game of cat and mouse seems to be shifting largely to the cat’s advantage.”

In 2008, Germany paid an informant for records taken illegally from a Liechtenstein bank, in an effort to track down German tax cheats including some of its international tennis stars. But it was the United States that has shaken the very foundation of Swiss bank secrecy – which essentially forbids access to information of or about the account of any person other than the account holder – when it demanded from the Swiss bank UBS the names of 52,000 account holders suspected of tax evasion. The Swiss initially refused but the tide had been turning against those “fiscal and moral termites who have been eating away at tax revenue bases throughout the world in an unprecedented fashion over the last thirty or so years.”

The Swiss blinked and now the Obama Administration is planning to go even further with the enactment of new legislation, the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act – that is designed to better enable US authorities to obtain information about offshore trusts and accounts used by Americans to hide their income and assets from the Internal Revenue Service of the US. The position is that the US can access the information under the scores of Double Taxation Treaties which the US has with countries across the world or under what are called Tax Information Exchange Agreements such as the one it has with Guyana. In the alternative, the US simply threatens sanctions against those it considers uncooperative.

Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax planning
It seems fairly simple to distinguish between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It is the difference between working outside the law and working within the law (though against its spirit). Tax evasion can and often is contrasted with tax avoidance, but also with tax planning/mitigation, and it is here that the issue becomes difficult. Tax evasion typically involves the non-payment of a tax that would properly be chargeable if the taxpayer made a full and true disclosure of income and allowable deductions. Common examples of tax evasion include a deliberate failure by a business to report the full amount of revenue received or the deliberate claiming of a deduction by a business for an expenditure it has neither incurred nor paid. There is no ambiguity about tax evasion – it is illegal and a crime under our laws. On the other hand, tax avoidance can be considered either as permissible or impermissible, although they are not that easy to distinguish.

Tax planning or tax mitigation can be traced back to a well-known and oft quoted case involving the Duke of Westminster in which the court ruled that “every man is entitled to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be”. One simple example of tax planning is where a business promoter makes his decision on the form of the entity on the basis of the applicable tax considerations. If the trader was to set up a company it would be taxed at 45% and be subject to Minimum Corporation Tax. On the other hand if he operates under his or a business name the profits all accrue to him and the trader would be taxed as an individual at the personal tax rate of 33 1/3%. Tax planning may also include the decision to lease or buy an asset which would have different tax consequences but both of which are entirely legal.

Pandemic
Where it becomes really difficult is in respect of “impermissible tax avoidance”, which refers to artificial or contrived arrangements, with little or no actual economic impact upon the taxpayer, and which are usually designed to manipulate or exploit perceived “loopholes” in the tax laws in order to achieve results that conflict with or defeat the intention of Parliament. In fact this is what section 74 of our Income Tax Act seems to address but uses the words “artificial” and “fictitious” and gives the Commissioner wide powers to disregard or set aside such transactions. In tax jargon our section 74 is a general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) and is designed to protect the revenue base from erosion by “fiscal termites” that seem to have created a pandemic in our economy, much worse than any Swine Flu or AIDS. .

Since revenue collection is a primary function of any tax system, any systematic and widespread avoidance activity will clearly have an adverse impact on that function. But avoidance does more than this – it also significantly affects the efficiency and equity of tax systems by siphoning off resources from more productive ventures, redistributing the tax burden and threatening to undermine compliance. We seem not to care that the poor employees are burdened by high and unavoidable tax personal taxes and wrongly charged VAT, all for the benefit of the private sector entrepreneurs, a term that has come to include drug dealers, money launderers and tax dodgers.

Changing administrative approach
Across the major economies, national revenue authorities have been taking measures to identify and shut down perceived impermissible tax avoidance activities. Within the UK, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Anti-Avoidance Group co-ordinates anti-avoidance activity including litigation strategies in relation to avoidance. To counter tax avoidance, the Group deploys its resources where it considers the risk greatest and provides direction for the effective use of resource within other areas of HMRC. The approach is now a form of cooperation between the tax authorities and larger entities that is designed to bring about effective consultation, certainty and speedy resolution of tax issues. Changing from the old command style tax administration to a more co-operative approach, the authorities enter arrangements with the taxpayer whereby the latter would submit its tax strategy on a particular issue and have this cleared by the tax authorities in return for which it is saved the time and cost of revenue audits and litigation.

Another approach is increased cooperation among the tax authorities of various countries with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Joint International Tax Shelter Information Centre set up by Australia, Canada, the UK and the US being prime examples.

The tax authorities are also aware that much of the tax avoidance by the big companies is hatched and or blessed by their tax advisors.

They have therefore not been hesitant to go after the larger accounting firms that design and market packaged boutique packages sold under attractive but expensive labels including asset protection and the virtues of mainly offshore tax shelters.

Both corporate as well as high-net worth individuals seems to consider the risks associated with tax evasion as more than compensated for by the rewards.

The changing attitude of the courts
The Duke of Westminster case (1936) has long dominated the thinking of the courts and more recently they have propounded what is called the Ramsay principle (1982) under which the courts would examine transactions that seem to have no commercial purpose and ignore or set them aside as envisaged by section 74 of our Income Tax Act.

The Ramsay principle was seen as a separate theory of revenue law which said that tax laws must be interpreted very strictly in favour of the taxpayer. That principle appears to have ended in 2005 in a case that came before the House of Lords.

The latest case essentially ruled that tax provisions dealing with tax evasion should be given a purposive construction which could have wide effect since all anti-avoidance measures are designed to prevent tax evasion. But life will never be as simple as this and no doubt the courts will continue to be challenged by the creativity of tax advisors and dishonest taxpayers even as the nature of transactions become ever novel and complex even for tax administrations.

The Guyana scene
There does not appear to have been any reported case out of the Guyana courts addressing section 74. That is equally true of the region with one notable exception in Jamaica, involving a leading case on asset stripping, under similar anti-avoidance provisions.

On the other hand, there are some frequently used permissible tax planning strategies, none of which again appear to have reached the courts but this is because they have not been challenged by the Revenue Authority. Some of the more common strategies include the structuring of the business (corporate or individual); the efforts to take advantage of the differential tax rates applicable to companies (non-commercial company and therefore taxed at 35% or commercial and taxed at 45%); and transactions designed to benefit from low or no tax under some of the provisions under Double Taxation Treaties of which the Caricom Treaty is a prime example.

What seems more common is the rank tax evasion where income is blatantly ducked and the money laundered abroad under the permissive exchange control regime we enjoy and very often abuse.

Another is to charge all forms of personal expenses to the business and get full deductibility while yet another is the use of fake invoices which overstate the figures in the accounts and understate those given to the Customs, both of which are accepted unknowingly by the GRA. Businesses can generally count on finding a friendly accountant willing to sign off on their make believe financial statements that seem to get past just as easily, the tax authorities as well as the lending institutions.

Guyana is the only regional country that has a net property tax capturing the assets held here and abroad. The overseas assets are almost invariably overlooked by the GRA despite arrangements that allow for the exchange of information with the tax authorities of all our major trading partners. The Cambios seem custom-designed to facilitate such evasion while the country appears only willing to pretend that we have serious intentions about preventing money laundering.

One glaring example of how tax evasion takes place under the noses of those in administrative, political and professional positions is with respect to political donations. It is known that businesses contribute significantly to the elections war chest of the major political parties, sometimes more than they pay in taxes. Yet, none of this gets its way into the books. Is it just possible that some of these donors who are feted under the full glare of publicity actually pay more to the political parties than in taxes? Or is it that they consider that this gives them tax immunity?

Conclusion
Tax reform in our case has first to deal with tax evasion and administration. This government has been paying lip service to tax reform ever since it came to power seventeen years ago. Unless it thinks that imposing VAT on top of high personal tax rates is tax reform, it has done nothing and tax evasion is now worse than it has ever been. VAT has brought in immoral windfalls, reducing the incentive for reform which the Government has delegated to the National Competitiveness Strategy. So far, that body which is chaired by the President has shown no intention, appetite or capacity to deal with it. And the GRA is either overwhelmed by the level and scale of tax evasion or is not utilising the tools and deploying the resources at its disposal to deal with the crisis.

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The IMF Consultation on the Guyana economy in 2008

Introduction
Using its stock-in-trade jargon the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund in a Public Information Notice issued on May 19, 2009 gave a very favourable report on the performance of the Guyana economy for 2008. The IMF attributed the maintenance of macroeconomic stability in 2008, despite what it referred to as external shocks and undefined “social pressures,” to the implementation of prudent fiscal and monetary policies by the Guyanese authorities. This assessment came in what is referred to as an Article IV Consultation in which the IMF holds bilateral discussions with member countries, usually every year. For the consultation an IMF staff team visits the country, collects economic and financial information, and discusses with officials the country’s economic developments and policies.

The website Countryrisk.com/guide/ archives/000309.html considers such consultations to be as “fine a piece of research as you’re likely to find produced by the public sector.” It claims that “the IMF staff economists harangue each country about its weak points on a periodic basis; these reports record this tongue-lashing.” Roles have reversed and it is the tongue-lasher who is in the effusive role immediately juxtaposing a criticism with an overwhelming corresponding achievement. The website also opined that with the recent fashion for good governance the consultation covers not just economic policy but also political institutions. That certainly did not happen with the Guyana 2008 Consultation. To complete the songs of praise of such reports, Countryrisk.com notes that they contain an excellent data section at the end including detailed budget numbers and IMF forecasts. Not even the IMF Public Relations Department could have done a better job.

Insensitive IMF
Today’s column looks at the May 19 statement which has generated practically no comment in the media. The consultation took place just days after the presentation of the 2009 Budget by the Minister of Finance and it is in many ways a restatement of the points made in the speech by the minister, except perhaps for its level of generalisation. If the matters contained in the report are almost identical, so too are the omissions. Nothing, for example, about job creation and unemployment levels, which must be the major poverty issues facing the country, the pervasive underground/parallel/narco-economy which has such a distorting effect on the official economy, and widespread tax evasion which is as much an equity issue as it is a contributor to poverty with the poor paying the taxes for the rich. In fact the reference to taxation said nothing of the punitive tax burden borne by those who have the misfortune to be honest or employed while the report lauds the introduction of VAT as “significant progress in the area of fiscal reform.” That is as insulting as it is insensitive.

In fact if the unnamed official who visited Guyana had taken the time to read the IMF’s own recommendations on tax reform s/he would have noted that many of the recommendations are yet to be implemented. Some of these are: the recommendation for the reduction of the corporation income tax rate for commercial companies from 45% to 40% in 2003 and to 35% in 2004; disallowing the carry forward of minimum tax in excess of corporation income tax; extending the minimum tax to noncommercial companies and the abolition of the threshold; limiting the deduction of interest paid for corporation tax purposes and imposing a withholding tax on payments to local government contractors.

And those locals more familiar with the tax laws and their operations could add several more, including constraints in the tax laws (income, corporation, property and VAT) which inhibit businesses; clarifying ambiguities in the tax laws; modernising the provisions relating to capital allowances in respect of the service and IT industries; thin capitalisation rules; trans-border and operational issues such as set-offs, interest, refunds, etc.

Resuscitating the PRSP
The report describes the attention to poverty alleviation as a medium term issue and notes that the directors “welcomed the upcoming finalisation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper,” which, however, did not get a mention in the 2009 Budget speech. Other than references to earlier documents, the past three budget speeches paid no attention to the PRSP, leading many to wonder whether the PRSP had been subsumed or abandoned. And the Minister of Finance in his 2009 Budget speech linked poverty reduction and economic development to the mobilisation of external and domestic debt. Not only can debt cause impoverishment, but what about the seventy billion dollars or so paid in VAT and other indirect taxes and PAYE which make many into working poor? It seems that the PRSP is no more than another marketing document to take to donors and the lending community.

Macroeconomic stability holds a special place on the IMF altar of economic performance and rectitude. If that is preserved then for the IMF all is well. But then we seem to have shifting sands when it comes to what the IMF in fact means by macroeconomic stability. Has the meaning changed from the early days when the IMF itself defined its objectives to include a) achievement of an average rate of GDP growth of 4%; b) a viable balance of payments situation in the medium term; and c) the re-incorporation of the parallel economy into the official economy? The economy is of course a long way from these, so the meaning not only changes but when growth decelerates the IMF considers it sufficient compensation that there is a decline in inflation. And after a sharp shortfall in 2008, sugar is expected to contribute to higher growth for 2009 to offset a slowdown in the other sectors of the economy.

Statistics
The IMF seems to accept all statistics at face value. It repeats the official growth in the 2008 economy of “about 3%,” described as a deceleration attributed to the performance of sugar. Even if it is assumed that at the time of its official’s visit in February, the statistics were unavailable, more complete data were available by the time of the report’s publication. The data disclosed by the Minister of Finance show that in 2008 sugar as well as forestry declined over 2007 by 15%, diamond by 37%, bauxite by 7% and manufacturing by 2%. Despite all of this the economy grew by 3.1% – a questionable proposition indeed.

There was not a single comment on the unrestrained excessive domestic spending, but in relation to external transactions the IMF noted that the country’s external current account had widened to close to 21%. The current account is the sum of the balance of trade (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (such as interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid). Almost as if to soften the impact of the deterioration the report not only seeks to attribute that deterioration to sugar but immediately adds “but was fully financed by concesssional loans, grants, and FDI.” As if one justifies the other.

No mention either of the alarming growth of the domestic debt which has quadrupled since 1992. As debt – domestic or foreign – rises so too does debt-servicing. The interest cost of servicing the domestic debt in 2008 was $2.98Bn while the interest of the external debt was $1.7Bn. Total debt service inclusive of interest cost is 14.4% of the total non-interest expenditure compared with 11.7% in 2007. Instead of seeking to address poverty reduction through incurring further debts policy-makers should be concentrating on job-creation to save our citizens from the indignities, cruel treatment and even death as they seek jobs in neighbouring countries.

Job creation
Even with all the limitations of our national statistics the evidence is overwhelming – we are not creating an adequate number of jobs to serve the population. That is the essence of the problems our citizens face. To blame Barbados for enforcing their immigration laws is counter-productive. Every government is sworn to uphold its laws even where there is a common economic space, and one only has to think of the illegal Mexicans who are routinely held by the US and returned to their country. To use Obama’s word it is “ignorant” to threaten to pull out of Caricom when we are certainly a major beneficiary. Or to hark back to the days when Bajans were welcome into our country, as if the traffic was all one-way.

For all the constant criticism about the economy inherited from the PNC and the boast about growth in the economy, since then the active number of employed persons in 2008 is less than it was in 1990, 1991 and 1992. NIS is a poverty issue and the failure by the scheme to insure persons is a failure of poverty management. It means that those persons would have no NIS pension when they turn 60.

Conclusion
Guyana is by far the largest country in Caricom and has one of the lowest population densities. We need our citizens – artisans and professionals – to stay and help build the country by exploiting the country’s vast potential, also the greatest in the region. We need imaginative economic and social policies; we need local and foreign investors who create jobs and make a net contribution to the country, and who do not just reap benefits and leave; we need a society that is as favourable to the poor as it is about the rich. We need a tax system that is fair and equitable.

At best the IMF sees poverty as a subscript to their macro-economic fundamentals. They seem neutral whether it is the parallel or the formal economy that makes the economy stable or how many persons are put on the breadline to achieve that stability. We need to make the elimination of poverty as much part of the equation as macro-economic stability. It is time to reject trickle-down economics.

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Looking back

Introduction
Today’s Business Page looks back not over the past year but to some fifteen years ago when on January 8, 1994, Ram & McRae (then Christopher L. Ram & Company) jointly with Ernst & Young Caribbean hosted a seminar ‘Managing for economic recovery.’ Among the persons who made presentations were then Senior Finance Minister Asgar Ally, the regional and international partners of Ernst & Young and Robert McRae and myself from Ram & McRae. With tax reform again being discussed at the national level I thought it appropriate to republish extracts from my presentation at that seminar on the topic ‘Tax reform: a vehicle for economic recovery.’ Some time over the next month or so Business Page will review developments since then and offer suggestions on steps which may seem necessary at this stage.

Role of taxation
Taxation is a major tool of economic management. Properly used it can play a significant role in fixing prices, allocating resources and alleviating social problems by redistribution of income. In the distant days of cheap oil and cheap money, however, serious mis-allocations and distortions were allowed to develop because of poor fiscal and monetary management.

Reality confronted the world and tax reform throughout most of the decade of the ’80s and early ’90s has been a popular cry in many countries of the world transcending continents, economic and political systems and different levels of economic development. In the metropolitan countries most notably the USA and the United Kingdom, the political directorate used tax reform as a way to marshal support for supply side economics, an experiment which emphasised policy measures to affect aggregate supply or potential output.

Across the other side of the world, the Asian tigers had as the objective of their reform increasing the revenues of their nontraditional sectors, a more effective income redistribution, removal of tax-induced incentives for waste and inefficiency and reduction in the transaction cost of transferring resources from the private and public sectors.

In the case of most of the developing countries the thrust for reform has largely been dictated by international lending agencies often in the role of a doctor administering to a sick patient. Unfortunately many of the prescriptions have largely followed wholesale copying of the changes in the metropolitan countries.

Although it is unreasonable to expect government to finance development expenditures while controlling the deficit and reducing inflation, there is little sympathy for administrations which increase taxes. In any case it is certainly not possible to finance development outlays of the public sector by depending entirely on regressive taxes, particularly since there is concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a small proportion of the population. It is unfortunately true that this situation is usually exacerbated in the process of economic development.

Tax ratio
It is usual in considering tax reform to examine the level of taxation in the country and to compare this with other countries. Table 1 [not reproduced] shows that of a random selection of fourteen countries, Guyana ranks number three among the highest taxed countries, well ahead of places like Singapore, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, USA, UK and Korea. The ratio for Guyana is almost certain to be unreliable for at least three reasons not all of which move in the same direction:

  1. The development of a culture in which tax evasion became a normal part of everyday life; this was particularly acute among the self employed persons in respect of their compliance with the income tax laws and the business community both in relation to income taxes and custom duties.
  2. Guyana is rated among the hyper-generous countries in the world: A vast array of tax concessions have been granted to a host of interest groups who have therefore benefited to the tune of unquantifiable millions. If the taxes otherwise due were not forgiven then the Tax/GDP ratio would have been even higher.
  3. Estimates of the unreported, unofficial economy suggest that that sector may be as large as the reported economy.

The issue of tax reform
Tax reform in any country cannot be carried out successfully without a clear recognition of the problems facing the country, an understanding of the direction in which it wishes to go and the policies to be pursued in getting there. Taxation is merely an instrument of economic policy and development and the beneficial consequence of taxation requires a clear and cohesive policy.

The discussion of tax reform is concerned as much with the structure of taxes both direct and indirect as it is about the level of taxation. As we have said before, where the figures are unreliable the measurement of the level is in any case meaningless. Tax reform must not be seen only as a revenue matter but as part of the control of the national budget. This therefore raises the issue of expenditure control about which I will just say that the structure of central government expenditure is such that most of the expenditure is at least fixed and cannot be reduced.

Taxation will always be the main source of revenue to most developed countries where the increasing expectations of a long suffering people demand increased not less revenues. However, the introduction of any additional taxes including those resulting from changes in rates or allowances only serve to penalise further those groups, most notably the employed persons and law abiding importers and manufacturers, who comply with the law. A case clearly exists for reform both for improvements in the tax structure and additional revenues. Such reforms should ensure that additional revenues are raised with very little adverse effect.

Tax reform includes winners and losers. The losers are often likely to be those with the greatest resources to resist and defeat reforms. Accordingly popular support, consultation and communication are vital to the reform process.

In seeking change, it must be recognised that the existing tax system is the product of decades of social, political and economic legislation and behaviour. Whilst it may be ideal in a tax reform package to go back to the drawing board and reconstruct all the laws and practices this is impossible to achieve for several reasons:

  • the existing tax system significantly influences current business patterns, relative prices, property values and legitimate vested interest;
  • the will hardly exists among politicians whose planning horizon extends only to the next elections;
  • the technical and other resources are seldom ever available; and
  • the opposition from vested interests and even tax administrators.

There is no such concept as an ideal model tax system which is applicable to all countries at a particular time or for any one country all the time. Tax reform is more a process of adapting to changing social, political and economic demands and priorities rather than a swift movement towards a desired goal.

Experience elsewhere suggests that efficient reform is best achievable by a series of incremental methods rather than by any comprehensive one time reform.

Tax evasion
Tax evasion affects both the Customs and the Inland Revenue Department and although the instances at the Customs Department seem to draw more media attention, the situation among certain groups of income tax payer is perhaps not much better. Although Table 1 [not reproduced] suggests that Guyanese are an overtaxed nation a comparison of the taxes paid by the self employed persons and those paid by employed persons suggests that there must be massive tax evasion by the self employed group. It seems strange that this group which includes professionals, farmers, restaurant and night club operators, traders and unincorporated businesses pays income tax equivalent to 0.44% of the total tax revenue of the country.

Laws exist for dealing with tax evasion but the resources available to the revenue authority are clearly inadequate to deal with the apparent scale of this practice. It is not a matter of laws or penalties for these are already extremely severe. The administrative capability to deal with this crisis must be enhanced by better staffing, training and salaries.

I believe that the bringing together of the two revenue departments under a single umbrella would lead to much more significant revenue collection through co-ordination.

The economy’s structure of financial institutions and procedures will need to be reshaped to aid in tax enforcement. Faceless transactions must be prohibited; an independent and skilled accounting profession must be fostered; specialised law tribunals must be set up to handle tax cases and corruption by public officers must be dealt with firmly.

The system has so far not adapted well to the abolition of the tax exit certificate, the untraceable movement of foreign exchange through the cambio system, and the increasing incidence of short term contractors, consultants and temporary workers.

While some of these recommendations will be unpalatable to many, the danger to society as a whole cannot be dismissed. Concentration of wealth among a small percentage of the society may on the surface appear to be attractive to those benefiting. At some point however, the inequity will result in social backlash from which no one can escape unscathed.

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The export allowance visited (continued)

Cost and benefits

Export allowances were introduced as an incentive for companies engaged in foreign exchange earnings, and looking at the countries where they are still available several years after their introduction, there must be some doubt as to whether they have achieved their objective. When the allowances were introduced in Guyana in 1988, the country was in desperate financial straights, the black market for foreign exchange was thriving and America Street was the dominant non-bank foreign exchange market. Things have changed substantially since then with the introduction of the Economic Recovery Programme by Hoyte and its faithful continuation by the PPP/C government. In other words the economic justification for the export allowance seems to have reduced substantially. Whether Guyana should have abolished it earlier would depend on those changing circumstances as well as an analysis of its contribution, its benefits and its costs.

Tax data in Guyana at sectoral or geographical levels are impossible to come by which would make tax policy formulation difficult indeed.

Who are the beneficiaries and to what extent does the economy benefit from the tax foregone? Such information simply is not publicly available, but from the legislation the furniture sector would surely be among the beneficiaries in respect of non-regional sales.

The direct cost of the allowance is the tax foregone against which we should consider whether the incentive was the real cause of the investment and whether efficient companies would not find it attractive to invest in, for example, value-added processing of what many consider to be among the best wood in the world, without both tax holidays and export allowances. What would be the justification for similar exemptions for shrimps and minerals (other than gold, diamonds and bauxite) which are in international demand, when the law already allows tax holidays of up to ten years, carry-forward of losses till eternity, initial allowances of up to 40% on qualifying plant and machinery as well as annual tax allowances? Anything more than those suggests that the beneficiary business is a state-financed venture in disguise.

In other words, other than for the beggar-thy-neighbour policies on tax incentives pursued mainly by developing countries, there may have been little justification for the generous concessions in the first place, concessions which detracted from the broader issue of generally high rates of tax. Instead of fixing the whole tax system we consolidated the high tax rates for some in order to give relief to others – a story replicated in so many other sectors of the economy.

Incentive rewards evasion

There are two other consequences of the allowance that are worthy of mention. The first is that it not only discourages sales to the domestic market which may not only have the same needs as the overseas market but helps to cover some of the fixed costs, therefore making the company’s export prices more competitive – a different issue from dumping.

The second in some ways stems from the first, but is also inherent in the system. Even where such a company serves the domestic market it has an incentive to ‘duck’ those sales by not bringing them into the books, thereby evading the tax which would have otherwise been payable.

Loss of respect

Guyana needs to encourage all its earners – workers as well as entrepreneurs. It can do so by enlightened policies that do not discriminate against those who can least afford it and in favour of those who can. As long ago as 1993, I presented a paper entitled ‘Tax Reform – A Vehicle for Economic Recovery,’ in which I pointed out the unjustness of the tax system and that we were ignoring the experiences of other countries in a blind pursuit of attracting businesses at any cost.

Just incidentally that paper was quoted extensively but selectively in the parliamentary debate on the VAT legislation. Not that we should underestimate the contribution of businesses in general or exporters in particular. But in relation to the export allowance, the example of Trinidad and Tobago would be useful more than just for the fact that their manufacturing has taken off since its abolition, which may only be part coincidence and part lower energy costs.

Accompanying the removal of the export allowance, that country introduced lower rates of income and corporate taxes and very directly granted 150% allowance for expenses incurred in export promotion. We should encourage exports but let us do so within good logic, fairness and international treaty obligations.

This particular column arose out of discussions on the private sector, its independence and willingness to look the government in the eye. If our entrepreneurs are unable to compete internationally without undue reliance on government and subsidies in areas where we have natural advantages such as rum, forestry and wood products, then their claim to being world class will be no more than empty boasts.