Ac­cord­ing to a mem­ber at a re­cent Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment, con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to tax­ing the earn­ings of chut­ney, so­ca, and ca­lyp­so artistes per­form­ing abroad, as a so­lu­tion to the need for a new stream of tax rev­enue. Now what on Earth could have pre­cip­i­tat­ed such think­ing, more so when our artistes are al­ready taxed, un­less it’s a case of brain fog? No mem­ber ob­ject­ed or said any­thing con­trary to the sug­ges­tion, but the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism, like the oth­er mem­bers ob­vi­ous­ly not at­tuned to some sig­nif­i­cant is­sues, opined that tax­a­tion was an op­tion. The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts has since made it clear in sub­se­quent pub­lic an­nounce­ments that an ad­di­tion­al tax was not a con­sid­er­a­tion of the Min­istry and the Gov­ern­ment.

The Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, the Hon Paula Gopee-Scoon, men­tioned the fail­ure by rel­e­vant min­istries to stream­line and for­malise cul­ture as a busi­ness, but her ob­ser­va­tion did not seem to get through to the JSC mem­bers. If the mem­bers were se­ri­ous about im­prov­ing tax rev­enues, they would first con­sid­er their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in en­sur­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty to Par­lia­ment for tax­pay­ers’ monies by mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and state in­sti­tu­tions such as the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC). With­in at least the last 13 years, no ac­counts have been tabled in Par­lia­ment for the NCC, which would have re­ceived over a bil­lion dol­lars in sub­ven­tions dur­ing that pe­ri­od. Ap­par­ent­ly, that is not a con­cern.

Ad­di­tion­al tax­es on the in­come of a few suc­cess­ful for­eign artistes could hard­ly be a so­lu­tion. In­stead, the JSC should con­sid­er how to re­ward these de­serv­ing cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors for fly­ing the T&T flag in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The re­al­i­ty is that our artistes and ath­letes do more to con­nect cul­tur­al­ly with our di­as­po­ra and po­ten­tial tourists than any gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion. Why not give thought to the role of the NCC, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the Min­istries of Tourism, In­dus­try and Com­merce, and For­eign Af­fairs in har­mon­is­ing ef­forts to mea­sure the re­turns on the tourism in­vest­ment, and to ad­vance the cause of this im­por­tant busi­ness?

It can­not be pleas­ing for tax­pay­ers to hear salaried rep­re­sen­ta­tives ad­mit­ting, with ease, that they have no re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on the val­ue that the busi­ness with­in their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties brings to the tax­pay­er. Ac­cord­ing to the Tourism Min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary dur­ing the JSC meet­ing, “In terms of the re­turn, we do not have that fig­ure. I don’t think CSO cap­tures that da­ta but it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that we could look at and it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that I think we would need.” So, what has the min­istry been do­ing for the past umpteen decades?

In­stead of talk­ing about tax­ing im­port­ed ma­te­ri­als that are al­ready taxed, how about if the NCC and the min­istries col­lab­o­rate on how to re-en­er­gise Car­ni­val in­no­va­tion and re­duce the un­de­sir­able fea­tures taint­ing the brand? The min­istry re­spon­si­ble for Child Af­fairs and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty may wish to mea­sure the im­pact of the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry of Car­ni­val on chil­dren.

How about in­cen­ti­fy­ing re­al lo­cal in­no­va­tion in cos­tumery? Is the moth­er of all car­ni­vals liv­ing up to that ex­pec­ta­tion? How about re­vers­ing the crowd­ing out of the small and strug­gling street ven­dors whose sales have been erod­ed to near zilch by the big car­ni­val en­ter­pris­es with their all-in­clu­sive pack­ag­ing? How about mak­ing Car­ni­val na­tion­al­ly in­clu­sive? How do we bring back the grand and north stands’ au­di­ences? How do we cap­i­talise on tech­nol­o­gy and mass-pro­duce in­no­v­a­tive cos­tumes here? How about col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go to strength­en the lo­cal and for­eign tourism prod­uct by har­ness­ing the great po­ten­tial of steel­band mu­sic? How about host­ing an an­nu­al or bian­nu­al in­ter­na­tion­al steel­band com­pe­ti­tion and an in­ter­na­tion­al pan jazz event? It’s worth ex­plor­ing the po­ten­tial of such per­for­mances to in­crease tourism rev­enue, bring much val­ue-added em­ploy­ment and en­hance the tourism brand.

We stand to gain more by cher­ish­ing, cel­e­brat­ing, and pro­mot­ing our artistes and rich cul­tur­al her­itage than by im­pos­ing more op­pres­sive tax­es.

We have the po­ten­tial to cap­ti­vate tourists, but we must make a mean­ing­ful ef­fort to clean up the en­vi­ron­ment, im­prove the tourism in­fra­struc­ture, re­verse the un­de­sir­able trends that have emerged in Car­ni­val, har­ness our strengths to build new, vi­able in­dus­tries and cre­ate ad­junct events to en­hance our Car­ni­val prod­uct.