Gail Alexan­der

There was some con­fu­sion over the price of sar­dines, which doesn't car­ry VAT, some up­set over the 12.5 per cent VAT, some sto­icism and res­ig­na­tion, as well as ac­cep­tance, among con­sumers yes­ter­day in down­town Port-of-Spain as the new tax struc­ture for food items took ef­fect.

Con­sumers were still gro­cery shop­ping in sev­er­al down­town ar­eas yes­ter­day but the VAT is­sue was clear­ly up­per­most in mind.

Gov­ern­ment an­nounced on Jan­u­ary 11 the im­po­si­tion 12.5 per cent VAT on a range of goods which were pre­vi­ous­ly tax-free and sub­se­quent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing the VAT im­ple­men­ta­tion. It al­so re­duced VAT from 15 per cent.

Af­ter one down­town su­per­mar­ket put a new price, in­clu­sive of VAT, on sar­dines, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stressed sar­dines did not car­ry VAT.

He said: "The new sched­ule of ze­ro-rat­ed items (Sched­ule 2), dat­ed Jan­u­ary 29, 2016, is the same as the list pub­lished on the min­istry's web­site on Jan­u­ary 11, 2016. The le­gal no­tice is at­tached and you will see clear­ly that item one(k) on the ze­ro-rat­ed sched­ule is 'sar­dines.' Clear­ly, there­fore, sar­dines are not sub­ject to VAT.

"Fur­ther, for clar­i­ty, if an item is not on the sched­ule of ze­ro-rat­ed Items, then it is sub­ject to VAT at 12.5 per cent."

Asked by the T&T Guardian what could be done re­gard­ing op­er­a­tors who put VAT on items which Gov­ern­ment left on the ze­ro-rat­ed list, Im­bert said: "There is no list pub­lished any­where with sar­dines sub­ject to VAT. I don't know where they would have got­ten that in­for­ma­tion from.

"What list are they us­ing? I get the feel­ing they are not both­er­ing to check the ac­tu­al list for them­selves and are re­ly­ing on some third par­ty to do the work for them.

"As I said be­fore, it's a free mar­ket and the on­ly way to deal with prof­i­teer­ing is to pub­lish these things so that con­sumers can make in­formed choic­es."

As for con­sumers mak­ing choic­es, the Ja­cob fam­i­ly of Laven­tille– pen­sion­er par­ents and their daugh­ter, a sin­gle moth­er–are now con­tem­plat­ing what choic­es they face af­ter do­ing their fort­night­ly gro­cery shop­ping at a west­ern Port-of-Spain bulk-buy­ing out­let and a down­town gro­cery where they usu­al­ly shop.

Show­ing the T&T Guardian, items in their car trunk from the two places, moth­er of two, Tracey Ann Ja­cobs said: "It is ter­ri­ble. The place where we bulk buy raised prices on the items we bought–packs of tu­na, et cetera–by $10.

"All in all, the 24 items we bought there came up to $1,314.07 and these are ba­sic items, meat, et cetera, no fan­cy stuff."

The gro­cery bill from the Port-of-Spain gro­cery was $311. Ja­cobs's moth­er said the bill is usu­al­ly about $200.

Ja­cobs' fa­ther, al­so a pen­sion­er, said: "I call this price in­crease steep, al­most $150 per cent... it's dif­fi­cult to cov­er it."

A 33-year-old, who gave her name as Me­li­ka, of Laven­tille, said she had no chil­dren but a big fam­i­ly. Hold­ing her gro­cery bag, she said: "The prices are a lit­tle high­er, not all seem to be changed but it's chal­leng­ing in this econ­o­my."

Ed­die Joseph, a pen­sion­er and fa­ther of an un­em­ployed son, hold­ing two bags said: "Cer­tain­ly things go­ing up. I saw prices in­creas­es. I'll just have to make out. If I buy two pounds of some­thing, I might have to cut it to one pound."

Ali­cia, in her 20s of Mor­vant, said with­out hes­i­ta­tion: "Prices are still rea­son­able. I just have to look at what I'm buy­ing a lit­tle more."

Allyson Moses, of Diego Mar­tin, said: "The prices are kin­da the same with some items but are things I re­al­ly need."

Karen, of San Juan, in her 30s, tot­ing her bags, said: "Things gone up a lit­tle more but it will still take away from my salary a lot."

Price list­ing chal­lenge

At least one down­town gro­cery own­er ad­mit­ted there had been some con­fu­sion over the VAT im­ple­men­ta­tion. He said they had want­ed clos­er con­sul­ta­tion with Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue to go over items. He added it was a bit of a chal­lenge in-house to put the new prices on items.

Im­bert al­so con­firmed there had been a com­plaint from a re­tail­er that Gov­ern­ment had not pub­lished the le­gal no­tice iden­ti­fy­ing the new list of stan­dard-rat­ed items, items that are sub­ject to VAT.

"I'm tak­en aback that al­though the VAT sys­tem has been in force for 28 years, there are re­tail­ers in T&T to­day who do not know that there is on­ly one sched­ule/le­gal no­tice with ze­ro-rat­ed items in the law, and that any­thing that is not on the sched­ule of ze­ro-rat­ed items is sub­ject to VAT. What has been go­ing on all these years?" he asked.

But Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath, who toured su­per­mar­kets in Princes Town, Cou­va and Trinci­ty, al­so not­ed neg­a­tive feed­back in most ar­eas.

"Gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing a per­ma­nent un­der­class in so­ci­ety. The poor is get­ting poor­er and los­ing pur­chas­ing pow­er," he said.