Deodat Indar, the Junior Minister of Ministry of Public Works, says that while A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) boasts of doing a lot for small businesses, the State recorded a 67% increase in tax revenue between 2015 and 2018.
“The numbers prove this,” he told the House, while noting that in 2015, tax revenue collection was $135B; in 2016, $142.8B; in 2017, $171.1B; 2018, $199.2B; and in 2019, $226.5B.
“During the period 2018 and 2019, the tax increase was 13.5%. Now the question we have to ask ourselves is: Where is this tax coming from and who is paying this tax? This tax, without a doubt, is paid by households, employees and corporations. So, long and short of it, if you take 2015 at $135B and to come to 2019, which is $226.5B, that is a 67% increase – that is the record of the APNU+AFC government, and you cannot hide from it. It is in every volume of the budget. How can you claim that you’ve helped small business when that money was somehow extracted from their pockets?”
Indar said that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), while it was in the Opposition, recognised that this increase in taxation did not bode well for Guyanese, and therefore, after assuming office last August, it began reversing these tax measures.
“That is why, when we presented 2020 budget, thereafter we passed a whole lot of reversals on those same taxes, because they were hardship measures on people. So, for the APNU+AFC to claim that they helped small business, is nothing more than an untruth. The numbers prove themselves,” he noted.
