Interesting discussion. I have no expertise in this area, but it has always occured to me that it would be likely that the benefits of GST if they could be justified in theory / on paper would almost certainly turn out to be costly for businesses / the tax authority to compy with / run. But that is just a hunch. And I only understand UK VAT a bit - never looked into Jersey GST. To take a for example, it sounds good on paper to "...levy GST on imported goods to prevent avoidance via Internet shopping." But how do you do this in practice? I am thinking when one checks out on Amazon or John Lewis etc etc, how does the GST on that sale end up with a GSY tax authority? Is it realistic, how much would it cost, would it add delay etc etc? Genuine question - but for an idea to work it has to be deliverable right down to the minute detail I think. No point failing at the last hurdle. There must be other anomalies - e.g. how to deal with exports? Or more to the point, is the admin / hassle worth it? Unless the tax was a high percentage I can envisage the overheads not being worth it. And I can see considerable econmic harm ensuing from a number of aspects. We are an island the size of a small UK town - again my instinct, but it may be that we should operate the fewest number of taxes possible and just work with income tax, document duty, TRP and the benefits system (including social security) plus some reform of corporation tax (and whatever other taxes we already have that I have overlooked!). And as others have said, we should not rush to increase taxation, perphaps save to the extent necessary to put us back in the position of more or less not having given 0% corporation tax to so many corporates. They might not suffer if we increased their tax to say 10% because if they are multinational and we have a Double Taxation Treaty with the relevant country (e.g UK) they might not be prejudiced, but our public purse could gain a bit (a fair slice). Anyhow, unlike you I suspect, I am no expert on any of this and so my thoughts could all be off the mark. No idea.
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
