The Tribune

The announcement of a tax amnesty by Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis yesterday might sound good for those who can take advantage of it – but look a little deeper and it’s a bad sign for the state of our country.

It’s been well documented that since the pandemic brought tourism to a halt that revenues have taken a plunge.

So this looks like a bid to refill the coffers with whatever the government can get – while at the same time frustrating those who are up-to-date on their bills and who have routinely paid their real property tax.

It’s almost as if the government is saying they know you can’t give them what you owe, so give them what you’ve got.

It looks like there’s a need to bring in money and to do it now, even if the government loses out on the total sum. It’s like a fire sale – but that would mean it’s our economy that’s burning.

The toughest part has to be for those who have kept up their payments and done their civic duty. No discount for those who have paid every cent, it seems. So why should they pay it in future? After all, if they wait long enough, they too might get a 50 percent discount as well.

That’s the danger with moves such as this – that it will discourage people who have been sticking to the rulebook.

A peculiar aspect of this is that this only applies to Bahamians – well, what about those foreigners or permanent residents with properties? Is everyone behind the gates of Lyford Cay up to date on taxes? If not, then why does the offer not also apply to them? It’s all Bahamian dollars going into the kitty.

That creates a strange split level arrangement when it comes to taxes that looks inequitable from the off. Does a birth certificate ensure a different level of taxation now? That’s the kind of thing that ends up in courts.

Does this mean there’s less money to pursue because non-Bahamians are more likely to have paid their taxes? Or does it mean non-Bahamians might pick up and go elsewhere if asked to settle up? We have no way of knowing because there’s no transparency over who does and who does not owe real property tax – which has long languished as an under-collected tax.

There might even be a good chance the people being targeted can’t settle up anyway – if these are people who have been out of work for months, no one is going to have thousands of dollars up their sleeve at this stage.

We could end up putting people off who are already paying only to get nothing from those who weren’t paying anyway – the worst of all possible worlds.

So by all means put a spin on it and hail it as an incentive – but if our economy was firing on all cylinders, would such a scheme be offered at all? We have our doubts.

Lanisha answers

Lanisha Rolle says she is confident that her integrity is “intact”. Her first interview since her resignation as Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture saw her reiterate that it was a “voluntary resignation”, but she would not answer on claims of impropriety in the ministry.

“Absolutely not,” she said, “I don’t entertain social media claims, they are what they are. You deal with facts, you deal with issue and you deal with truth. I don’t have time for those things.”

Which would be fine enough if the only allegations were coming from social media – but that rather overlooks the fact that even in the Cabinet Office statement announcing her resignation, it was noted that “Certain matters have been brought to the attention of the Prime Minister and are under investigation”.

The Prime Minister, it is understood, received an internal audit report prior to her resignation and Auditor General Terrence Bastian is currently auditing the Sports Authority.

That’s somewhat more than social media commentary.

We hope that the investigations being carried are done so thoroughly – and transparently so the public can see what issues there may have been. We hope that Mrs Rolle would encourage the same – and we would hope that indeed they do find no wrongdoing. No one wants there to be failings – for the ones let down by any such problems are the Bahamian people. If there are problems, however, it should be dealt with through the full process of the law.

Mrs Rolle suggests that the audit is simply an “ordinary process”. If all is well, however, it doesn’t quite explain her sudden resignation. The closest she comes to answering is when she says “It’s politics. Decisions are made, things are done and you make the best of it and that’s what you must do. You must be patriotic, you must be respectful at all times and you have to trust the process and that’s all I’m doing, being patient.”

She goes on to say that “this is just simply a different arena, there are different rules for this arena so I must continue to learn”.

That doesn’t answer why she resigned. Nor does it answer the concerns over matters in her ministry.

Until there are clearer answers, this story isn’t over.