Clarke says Golding’s criticism of tax-free financials ‘deceptive’
FINANCE MINISTER Dr Nigel Clarke closed the Budget Debate yesterday, firing several salvos at Opposition Leader Mark Golding, calling his criticism of the Government’s tax-free financial blueprint for the coming financial year “deceptive”.
Golding last week Tuesday sought to discredit the Government’s argument of implementing no new taxes in the last seven years, when he made his contribution to the debate, asserting that tax collection had increased by $419 billion since 2021.
He said in financial year 2015-16, the final year of the last People’s National Party (PNP) administration, the tax collected totalled $411.8 billion.
This was 24 per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP), he said.
Golding said under the current Holness Administration, tax collected is now over 28 per cent of GDP.
He said $419 billion of additional taxes had been collected over the past four years, representing an increase of 66 per cent.
Golding said that this is more than double the accumulated inflation of 31 per cent over that four-year period.
But Clarke, who was bringing the curtain down on the discussion in the House of Representatives, said the opposition leader in doing so omitted the years 2016-17 to 2020-21.
“There is no PNP government that has presided over a Jamaica with a nineyear stretch of continuously increasing tax revenues, in real terms, without the imposition of any new taxes,” said Clarke.
He said that the parliamentary opposition is simply confused and, in its confusion, presented a chart that skipped over years and is therefore “deceptive”.
Clarke said the average annual rate of increase in tax revenues over the entire period is 9.4 per cent.
He said revenues increased by 11 per cent for the financial year 2016-17 over 2015-16, by eight per cent for 2017-18 over 2016-17, by nine per cent for 2018-19 over 2016-17, by seven per cent for 2019-20 over 2018-19 and declined by 13 per cent for 2020-21.
“So, Mr Golding presents a chart of revenue growth and deliberately leaves out all the years that are consistent with the average growth over that period and deliberately leaves out the historic revenue decline of the first COVID year.
“I don’t know any other way to describe this than utter deception,” Clarke argued.
He said revenues climbed in 2021-22 by 22 per cent over 2020-21, the year COVID-19 caused major economic contraction.
However, he said these revenues were only six per cent higher than 2019-20, the year before the pandemic.
He noted also that revenues climbed again in 2022-23 by 22 per cent over 2021-22 but said these 2022-23 revenues only grew by 9.1 per cent compounded if compared with the pre COVID year 2019-20.
He said Golding’s assessment was “just a barefaced deceptive statement”.
“The deception is that he is counting from the depth of COVID when revenues declined by 13 per cent in one year, the largest amount in Jamaican history – but he is not telling you that,” said Clarke.