The Tribune

OPPOSITION leader Michael Pintard has called on government to explain its rationale for removing the ten percent duty on pleasure sailing craft.

And in a letter to Prime Minister Phllip Brave Davis, Mr Pintard demands to know why the government appears to have ignored parliamentary rules to remove the duty.

At a time when the country is facing an increasing battle with rising costs, Mr Pintard argues that giving a new unexplained tax break that only benefits the wealthy will be hard to stomach for struggling ordinary Bahamians.

 In his letter to Mr Davis, Mr Pintard wrote: “ We are dismayed that the Minister of Finance would issue a memorandum that would seek to implement a change to the tariffs for pleasure craft outside of legal requirement that any such adjustment be approved by Parliament.

 “We are further dismayed that the FInancial Secretary is indicating that he is operating under direction -  a direction which could only come from the Ministerial level.

 “We cannot find any provision in the law to allow such a tariff adjustment to take place other than through Parliarmentary approval. We would ask that your office provide us with the legal justification for this initiative. If there is none, we demand to know who issued this directive and what disciplinary action is to follow for this apparent breach of the law.

 “We further demand to know why such an initiative would be executed without informing the public on the measure and the policy rationale for same. We fully understand why any policymaker would be embarrassed to put forth such a measure to give a tax break to wealthy boat owners while asking Bahamian pensioners to pay VAT on medicine. But that shame does not give the government licence to attempt to change tax policy by stealth.”