In re­cent days, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has had the du­bi­ous ho­n­our of de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment against Op­po­si­tion claims that tax in­creas­es are be­ing con­tem­plat­ed to boost rev­enue. 

In re­sponse, he has re­peat­ed­ly sought to dis­cred­it these al­le­ga­tions, re­it­er­at­ing his stance in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sup­port­ers, de­tails of a Cab­i­net Note con­tain­ing tax pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing a sug­gest­ed in­crease in the Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) to 15 per cent to gen­er­ate an ex­tra $1.4 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly for the Gov­ern­ment.

While not dis­put­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the doc­u­ment shared by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter not­ed in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day that it has been cus­tom­ary for min­is­ters of fi­nance to re­ceive such re­ports from min­istry of­fi­cials over the last 30 years. 

The pur­pose of the doc­u­ment, he said, was to present the Cab­i­net with an overview of the fi­nan­cial con­se­quences as­so­ci­at­ed with po­ten­tial tax changes. 

Among the tax­es list­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion in this par­tic­u­lar Cab­i­net Note were VAT, In­come Tax, Cor­po­ra­tion Tax, and the Busi­ness Levy. A new Drug Ap­pli­ca­tion Fee was al­so de­tailed in the doc­u­ment. 

Nonethe­less, Mr Im­bert stressed that no de­ci­sion had been made re­gard­ing the con­tents of the doc­u­ment while dis­miss­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s claim of pend­ing in­creased tax­a­tion as “a fool­ish and ridicu­lous false ac­cu­sa­tion.”

In­deed, un­til Per­sad-Bisses­sar can pro­vide ev­i­dence that the Cab­i­net ap­proved any tax in­crease, her claims re­main mere­ly al­le­ga­tions.

At this stage, all we know for sure is that these de­tailed pro­pos­als were pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net in May of this year. 

How­ev­er, giv­en the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cli­mate lead­ing up to an ex­pect­ed gen­er­al elec­tion, it is cru­cial that the Gov­ern­ment makes its po­si­tion on in­creased tax­a­tion as clear as pos­si­ble. 

To say that no de­ci­sion has been tak­en on the mat­ter is not the same as say­ing that the pro­posed mea­sures have been dis­missed out of hand and will not be con­sid­ered any­time soon. 

Se­nior mem­bers of the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion ought to know by now that pub­lic sen­ti­ment has not con­sis­tent­ly favoured the Gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the vague­ness in their de­nun­ci­a­tion of re­cent ac­cu­sa­tions.

The mat­ter of CDAP spend­ing is a clear case in point.

Af­ter Im­bert pub­licly raised con­cerns about the high CDAP bill at a re­cent Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ses­sion of Par­lia­ment, he then ac­cused the me­dia, which quot­ed him ver­ba­tim, of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion about pos­si­ble cut­backs. 

Days lat­er, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley sug­gest­ed that cut­backs could be con­sid­ered. Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, the Prime Min­is­ter re­flect­ed on the sub­stan­tial growth of the pro­gramme’s bud­get from $35 mil­lion to close to $400 mil­lion per year be­fore ask­ing, “so what” if the Gov­ern­ment chose to cut back spend­ing to around $200 mil­lion?

As the na­tion ap­proach­es a cru­cial gen­er­al elec­tion pe­ri­od, im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Gov­ern­ment would be ad­van­ta­geous for all con­cerned.

We have made it clear in this space many times be­fore that the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­i­bil­i­ty gap is close­ly linked to its im­prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy.

To elim­i­nate any am­bi­gu­i­ty, it must clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate that tax hikes are not in­clud­ed in its im­me­di­ate agen­da, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the pub­lic be­ing told that the Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing a rev­enue short­fall this year. Mere­ly stat­ing that a de­ci­sion has not been made does not de­fin­i­tive­ly rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty.