... PAAC members reject assessment that PATH increase is positive
CHAIRMAN OF Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) Dr Wykeham McNeill along with other members present – Fitz Jackson, Phillip Paulwell, and Mikael Phillips – rejected the assessment from the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) that the net effect of the Government’s tax measures and the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) increases on the poorest 10 per cent of Jamaica was positive (1.2 per cent).
The information formed part of PIOJ’s Who Benefits? Who Pays? – an assessment of the impact of the tax reform measures on consumption expenditure.
McNeill questioned how that could be when the PATH increases will not take effect until June.
“How can it be that you do a study which says that the impact of it on almost all deciles was negative, however, when you factor in PATH, they became positive? I don’t see how you could do those studies and they (increases) have not come in yet,” he queried.
Director General Dr Wayne Henry explained that the PIOJ used data on what beneficiaries are now getting, what they will get, and the current tax levels. “That’s part of the planning process. The expected impact – that is what is being looked at,” he told the committee yesterday. The PAAC chairman was not satisfied. “The PATH beneficiaries still have not got their increase. So the whole impact on all the increases has been piled on them. So if you follow that, every single decile, possibly except for one, is worse off,” McNeill countered. “So, we have two problems. Policy measures have not been buttressed by the relevant studies and programmes in a timely manner. But secondly, what you’re basically saying from our perspective is very hard to see.” Over the next two months, the PIOJ is to study the impact of the indirect taxation on Jamaicans.