WHEN States members start another four-day marathon meeting tomorrow, one of the items on the agenda will be a zero-10 climb-down badged as an always-intended but early review of the taxation policy.
Much will be made of the rapidly changing geo-political landscape and a credit crunch that no one could have foreseen (apart from those commentators, including one from Guernsey, whose inconvenient observations were ignored) because this is also a face-saving exercise.
Indeed, given that it has taken seven years, a huge amount of work and legislative input and at least £200m. in lost revenues suddenly to discover that zero-10’s a dead duck, the States are left looking if not actually careless then at least having been sold a pup.
The latest developments have also retrospectively put into context the debate that split the island (if not the States) over whether it would have been better to go for the Deputy Charles Parkinson zero-20 option: that would also have breached the spirit of the code even if it had cleared earlier obstacles.
This, however, is not about blame. Yes, the chief minister needs to give an account of how or why there were not earlier warnings and why the three Crown Dependencies were allowed – or duped – into sleepwalking into policies guaranteed to destabilise them financially.
If, as the UK claims, it has ultimate responsibility for the islands’ good governance, this demonstrates an odd way of discharging that responsibility unless it, too, had no inkling that a tax strategy negotiated and approved every step of the way was about to be ambushed.
Nevertheless, the point remains that the island had no other credible alternative at the time to zero-10 and the focus needs to be on replacing it as soon as possible.
The other priority has to be resolving the tax penalty islanders now labour under as a result of the scrapping of corporation tax.
The fear is that States members will not only fail to remove the burden but will actually add to it instead of cutting their own costs.
That would be utterly unacceptable and a betrayal of faith.
Article posted on 26th October, 2009 - 2.42pm
One Article Comment
Dear Opinion
When something that HSSD do badly, you make headlines that SHOUT how BAD wasting TAXPAYER MONEY is.
The WAO come along and it’s ALL THINGS MUST BE BETTER because TAXPAYERS are worth it
Tribal Helm say ALL ARE IDIOTS UNLESS YOU BUY THIS PACKAGE see Politicians they say YOU ARE USELESS AT EVERYTHING
You say, “yeah whatever y’know coulda gone either way
Let’s forget about all this eh and start again eh eh”
Digard, j’accuse.
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