I don't know. Honestly, I don't.

Before anyone accuses me of not putting forward alternatives to address our fiscal situation, let me preface by saying that I do not have to. Very qualified, successful, respected people have put forward multiple solid, sustainable proposals that have seemingly fallen on the cement-laden ears of successive governments. Workable alternatives already exist.

I won’t spend any time discussing the credibility of the People’s National Party. I am not even going to talk about the dizzying arrogance of the Prime Minister and her (oversized) Cabinet. I am overlooking the tales of members of the Cabinet revelling and enjoying sweet sweet mas in Port of Spain—no doubt on their own dime—while the entire country sat in the dark about our economic situation. And there will be no mention of the fact that as we barrelled towards economic uncertainty, one member of the People’s National Party, decided to engage two social media platforms in a conversation about homosexuality, his Bible and the all important Tommy Lee. I asked him about the declining value of the Jamaican dollar and he is yet to respond.

I do not propose to be an analyst. I do not propose to be an advocate. Right now, I am a Jamaican. A young Jamaican who for decades to come will be straddled with the after-effects of the absolute nonsense happening now. I am not on a quest to examine which party or person is at fault or who is right or wrong. I just want some clarity on a few things.

The current Government of Jamaica (GOJ) presented an initial tax package that was true to the promised ‘bitter medicine’ we were expecting. Now, the GOJ has announced an additional tax package making the revenue target $40b. Emily Crooks says this is the largest tax package ever.

Errrmmm????? The GOJ cannot even run a tax amnesty properly. If they are having so many issues in reaching current revenue targets… what is in that coffee at Jamaica House that has them thinking they can hit a higher target? Is the GOJ cutting spending somewhere? Smaller government? That wasn’t included in the documents Peter Phillips tabled in Parliament—which surprised the entire nation—or the historic joint national broadcast with the Prime Minister, so… I don’t know.

I got a copy of the tax measures (and yes, the GOJ repeatedly mentioned that it is “committed to broadening the tax base and ensuring revenue adequacy”) and included in the GCT measures are inclusion of the Telephone Calls Tax (TCT) as part of the GCT base. This is expected to yield $1.3-billion and would “be included in the taxable base for the purpose of calculating the GCT”.

WHAT. DOES. THIS. MEAN? When Bruce Golding and Audley Shaw taxed tampons and salt, they just came out and said what the tax package meant. Although most of those measures never saw the light of day, the administration of the day said to us ‘this is what we want to do’. What are you going to be adding GCT to exactly? Who is going to pay it? What even gave you this idea in the first place? I don’t know.

The GOJ is proposing to add GCT to all fees and taxes that are payable at the ports. ALL FEES including the environmental levy, customs user fee/custom administration fee, CET, and ASD.

EL-OH-EL!

The GOJ is proposing to fix an ‘administrative anomaly’ by adding GCT to the face value of prepaid vouchers and airtime. The argument is that consumers pay the full cost including GCT for each card they buy, however, when service providers sell the vouchers and airtime in wholesale volumes it is sold at a discounted cost and the GCT is only paid on that discounted cost. Since retailers may or may not be registered taxpayers, the GOJ argues, the full GCT is not remitted to the coffers. The GOJ says the measure “SHOULD NOT” (and the emphasis is not mine) result in an additional tax liability to the consumer. This is going to yield a staggering 0.2-billion.

Wow. I don’t know how the country continued to run with this HUGE loophole in the system! Just wow. My mind has been blown. The GOJ has already deflected any blame for possible price increases to the consumer, since consumers already pay for the full cost of the GCT. But… ahm, if (and probably when) it costs more for these non-registered retailers to buy the phone cards, what do you think they will do? Absorb it like the good, loving, selfless citizens they are? I don’t know.

The GOJ wants to increase education tax by 0.5% for employers and 0.25% for employees and impose an additional 5% tax on “large unregulated companies”.

More taxes from declining (in value) salaries coupled with creative corporate taxes. At the very least, I would like to be a fly on the wall in the meeting when the GOJ needs corporate support for anything. JCDC naw do nuttin’ mo’ fi di res a year? Lisa naah kip no gala dis year? No? I don’t know.

The GOJ is introducing a new fee at the ports, a Customs Administration Fee. This “will supplant the current CUF (customs user fee) and other processing fees … which would represent a more accurate reflection of the services being offered by Jamaica Customs Department”.

Is this the CUF, only new and improved? The fee will be imposed on all imports except for those by approved charitable organisations and the bauxite sector so I would like to know what exactly it is covering that is so fiscally burdensome on Customs. The government says this is in keeping with WTO (World Trade Organisation) guidelines. Countries sign international agreements that have to result in new taxes? And even so, are we only just now realizing we made this commitment? Does Peter Phillips believe we are morons? I don’t know.

The GOJ claims it is proposing to initiate measures to increase the relatively low property tax compliance rate, reform the property tax regime, introduce “transfer pricing rules” as well as “thin capitalization rules”.

The government failed miserably at a traffic ticket amnesty. The government wants to implement all these changes in a few months, some even a few weeks. The government, failed miserably, at a traffic ticket amnesty. In the GOJ’s defence, they could have been preparing to do this for quite some time and are equipped to tackle it. Did Peter speak about the capacity of the GOJ to implement these changes?  What happens if these measures don’t yield the expected results? Is this the PNP's idea of tax reform? I don’t know.

Is Jamaica House still open?

This is the most we have heard from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance about the economy since... well, just since. Now I understand that Sister P is busy ‘working, working, working’— but seriously? What exactly does the Prime Minister do? I ask with no disrespect. I ask only because I do not know. The Office of the Prime Minister has a communications unit. The Prime Minister has a press secretary. The nation’s Ministry of Information is HOUSED at the Office of the Prime Minister, yet still I get the sense that very little is happening at Jamaica House. The weekly cabinet press briefing, occasional long photo captions from various ceremonies and ‘PM says to band together’ style press releases are not cutting it. The PM's few public utterances do not offer much hope either, as they are usually characterized by political bickering. Has she convinced herself she is in a dancehall clash? If you are a minister without portfolio with responsibility for a specific area… isn’t that a portfolio? Will the OPM ever stop SCREAMING in their social media updates? I don’t know.

If you have any answers feel free to let me know. I’m sure many people would like to know the answers too, as we “band together" and face the challenges we must. It's exceedingly difficult, however, to support a government that continues to be less than forthcoming with the Jamaican people and hellbent on doing whatever it wants to do anyway.

PS – Don't Parliamentarians ‘walk out’ of Parliament too often? Does the move of protest still have significance? I don’t know

Twitter: @brandonallwood

Rules & 'Discipline': The broader debate

I read with great interest a recent editorial addressing the issue of children being turned away from schools because of infringements on the dress code. I couldn’t help but shake my head and sigh in dismay at the position taken by the editorial.

The editorial stated that students who refuse “to conform to their school's dress code are giving a pretty good indication of the kind of citizens they are likely to become.” This claim transcended mere commentary and made a sweeping indictment on the character of all students who choose to wear tighter pants and shorter skirts.

That’s right. Those girls who aren’t wearing skirts at the right level and boys who are wearing tighter pants than permitted will likely become undesirables in the society. Yes, they’re nothing but pieces of gum on the heel of society’s shoe. 

As a young Jamaican I am most offended by that statement, as it completely ignores important issues that ought to be featured in this discussion. 

We must ask ourselves if some of these rules are still relevant and if they actually foster the kind of discipline Jamaicans need to thrive in a world with rapidly changing social norms and attitudes.

Some adults argue that this generation of students is lawless, because in their time, these same rules were enforced and respected. Jamaican schools produced the all-perfect crop of adults who have shaped the peaceful, immaculate country we live in with balanced budgets and a booming economy. Let’s not pretend that there is a perfect, or even a remotely close to perfect, society that young Jamaican's are getting ready to derail. 

Let’s face it—many school rules are archaic and irrelevant. The same editorial admitted some were “left over from our colonial past.” 

Administrators would have us believe that uniforms create an atmosphere of equality. This puerile argument ostensibly justifies enforcing conformity. Sorry to say, but this claim isn’t true. It betrays the naiveté of some administrators who are unaware of the social dynamics of young people. What do we think is in some of the barrels that swarm our ports year round? What do we think some of the ‘back-to-school’ remittances are being used for? Parents innately want the best for their children and for some that means brand name companions for the dull khaki pants and blue tunics. And there are also those students who save year round to be able to get what they want. 

Students gladly revel in sportsmanship to see which of them are wearing the most expensive shoes or sporting the best looking backpack. The idea that brand name envy is in any way eliminated by uniforms is weak; just ask the sixth formers wearing Lacoste white shirts. 

Where is the voice of the Guidance Counselors Association of Jamaica in this debate? The fate of our students cannot be decided with emotion and dogma. We need to take a critical look at why students flout dress codes. Instead of writing them off as a speck on the windshield of our perfect society, we must engage students as their guardians, not dictators. It cannot be that we, as a nation, have accepted that these young men and women are simply unruly. Given that each child is an individual, we must examine whether it is sensible to foster discipline through enforced uniformity. Where is the consideration that these children are fighting to express themselves? 

 

I believe that teachers and administrators could use the time spent policing conformity to do something more constructive. Surely there are better ways to engage uncooperative students than embarrassing them in front of their peers and suspending them from school. Here we have the potential to stimulate needed dialogue about social attitudes and personal responsibility being wasted. Instead of taking a holistic approach to discipline, we punish disobedient students with brutal force in hopes of curbing behaviours we arbitrarily decided were inappropriate. 

The editorial points out another important issue. We need to consider the generation gap between school administrators and students and the role it plays in the testy exchanges that are frequently reported. Students and administrators have two separate views of the world and how one should live. This is most evident when we consider notions of respectability and preoccupations with self-presentation. 

Our generation is less bothered with the long-held view that appearance is somehow linked to intelligence. I think that has a lot to do with the remarkable progress we have been making to ensure every child has access to secondary education—regardless of where you get your mail. But it also has to do with rapidly changing social norms. Our children are less prepared for the world because intransigent administrators are trying to recreate and impose the social norms of decades past.  

A middle ground has to be met because we cannot continue sending dissident students home in droves. While children need boundaries, there is no need to condemn and stigmatize the choices these children make. We must recognize their agency and their right to self-expression. Negotiations will not proceed productively if supposedly all-perfect administrators are pitted against what the editorial suggests are the future miscreants of our country. Mature, all-rounded debate is needed, however that might be hard to get since reprimanding students and holding sacred post-colonial ideals are easier to do. 

Link to the editorial: http://mobile.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120908/cleisure/cleisure1.php