SAN JUAN: Guyana’s new government says it will keep a campaign pledge to review the country’s value added tax as part of a broader evaluation of the entire tax system.
“Within the 100 days we are expected to put together a tax reform committee that is expected to look in a more long term way about taxes in general,” Finance Minister Winston Jordan said in a statement published on the government’s official web page.
Jordan said that while he sympathizes with the public’s desire for lower taxes, less revenue means less in the way of government spending.
“Citizen Jordan will be clamoring for low taxes, but Minister Jordan is a different story, and every time somebody makes a demand for reduction and has all the right reasons, you have to know what the reduction will result in, in actually loss of revenue, or gain in revenue,” the minister said.
An opposition coalition won last month’s general elections in Guyana, ending two decades of rule by the People’s Progressive Party.
