An­dre Wor­rell

From Thurs­day, con­sumers of al­co­hol and to­bac­co, as well as cit­i­zens who shop on­line can ex­pect an in­crease in the prices of these goods and ser­vices.

In his bud­get state­ment on Sep­tem­ber 30, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced a se­ries of tax in­creas­es that would be en­forced come Oc­to­ber 20. The bud­get de­bate is like­ly to con­clude in the Sen­ate be­fore then.

These specif­i­cal­ly re­late to im­port­ed and lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts as well as on­line pur­chas­es shipped via air-freight.

The min­is­ter pro­posed to in­crease "the ex­cise du­ty on lo­cal­ly-man­u­fac­tured to­bac­co prod­ucts by 15 per cent as well as on al­co­holic prod­ucts by 20 per cent."

With re­spect to im­port­ed to­bac­co and al­co­hol prod­ucts, Im­bert said, cus­toms du­ty on im­port­ed to­bac­co and al­co­holic prod­ucts "from the Com­mon Mar­ket ori­gin will al­so be in­creased by 15 per cent and 20 per cent re­spec­tive­ly."

He said the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed to net an ad­di­tion­al $120 mil­lion from the in­crease in ex­cise and cus­tom du­ties on lo­cal­ly pro­duced and im­port­ed al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts, $60 mil­lion from ex­cise du­ties on lo­cal­ly pro­duced al­co­hol and to­bac­co and $60 mil­lion on cus­toms du­ties on im­port­ed al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

He said con­cern for the health and well-be­ing of cit­i­zens was at the heart of the in­crease in tax­es on these prod­ucts.

"This harm­ful use brings sig­nif­i­cant so­cial and eco­nom­ic loss­es to in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­ety at large. In T&T, it costs the Gov­ern­ment $500,000 per year to treat just one lung can­cer pa­tient. For far too long, we have had to deal with the neg­a­tive con­se­quences as­so­ci­at­ed with the high con­sump­tion of these prod­ucts," Im­bert said.

In the case of on­line shop­ping, Im­bert said a sev­en per cent charge will be im­posed on pur­chas­es that ar­rive T&T through couri­er com­pa­nies or brought in di­rect­ly by in­di­vid­u­als via air freight. This mea­sure is ex­pect­ed to raise an ad­di­tion­al $70 mil­lion. The on­line tax will be "due and payable at the bond­ed ware­hous­es be­fore clear­ance of goods or di­rect­ly to cus­toms in the same way that VAT and cus­toms du­ty are cur­rent­ly col­lect­ed."