Government minister calls on middle-class to shoulder tax burden

A Government minister is pleading with this country’s middle-class to be their brother’s keeper and shoulder some burden and make the sacrifice to pay the Pandemic Levy.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Senator Dr Shantal Munro-Knight said this category of persons must see themselves as those on the frontline who have to pick up arms to help the country fight.

Making her contribution to the Pandemic Contribution Levy Bill, 2022 which was passed in the Senate today, Senator Munro-Knight said: “Of course it is going to be uncomfortable, no one likes to pay more taxes. No one likes to see money coming out of their pockets. But again, I want to ask, are we here Mr President because of fiscal mismanagement of this Government?

“No. We are here as a Government who has proven itself capable to the extent that the way that this Government has managed its finances, has managed the economy, has managed the society through the COVID-19 pandemic has been held up as a model internationally.

“So that, even though it is uncomfortable, even though the shoe is pinching a bit, we are confident that if Barbadians, the companies and the individuals to which this pandemic levy applies stay the course with us that we will be able to move this country forward in terms of addressing this challenge,” she said.

The Government senator argued that the levy is intended to help Government responsibly close its financing gap, seeking to make sure that there is a balance to how challenges are addressed.

Barbadians earning more than $6 250 per month and businesses that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, will have to contribute to the $1 billion bill for the Government’s COVID-19 fight.

Prime Minister Mottley told the nation in March that the one-off payments, expected to raise a total of $120 million, would be taken as a pandemic contribution levy of one per cent of an individual’s income every month for a year.

She also announced that businesses in the telecommunications, commercial banking and general and life insurance sectors, and those in the retail of petroleum products, will pay 15 per cent of their net income over eight months.

“I know that there are those amongst us that would say that the burden of this falls upon the middle-class and the Government is essentially trying to unravel the middle-class with this measure and that the middle-class has continually had to bear the burden of lifting this country up. Mr President, I stand with my hands in the air to say that it is true. We have had to do that., but that is the middle-class globally.

“I have to say that this is the situation that we find ourselves in and I reiterate that it requires a level of sacrifice from Barbadians, middle-class Barbadians, because of the standard of living that we have,” she said.

Senator Munro-Knight also added that while concerns have been raised about the level of Government borrowing, the reality stands that Barbados is facing an unfriendly economic environment and the ruling administration must be able to exercise the necessary fiscal prudence be able to raise the finances necessary to run the country.

She said that any government has to know how to manage its budget and must make specific decisions about how it will spend available resources.

She said one of those decisions has to be about how the country will manage its debt responsibly, as the Government is doing through the BERT [Barbados Economic and Recovery Transformation] programme.

“This is our BERT programme and the money that we are getting from the IMF [International Monetary Fund), we are doing so at concessional rates,” she said. anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb