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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Im­bert de­nies Mark's claims as Sen­ate de­bate abort­ed...

Taxes on grog, smokes legal

by

20161115

Tax in­creas­es on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts are per­fect­ly le­gal de­spite yes­ter­day's lack of de­bate in the Sen­ate on an or­der con­cern­ing the tax­es, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has said.

He clar­i­fied the sit­u­a­tion af­ter a planned Sen­ate de­bate on the or­der was can­celled by Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark ex­pressed con­cern at the "sur­prise" pro­ce­dure, which he said had nev­er been done. He said the Op­po­si­tion would re­search the mat­ter and if nec­es­sary may chal­lenge it in court.

Mark claimed if the "lack of pro­ce­dure" yes­ter­day made the tax­es on al­co­hol/to­bac­co prod­ucts il­le­gal, Gov­ern­ment may have to re­turn du­ties al­ready paid on those items.

The sit­u­a­tion arose in the Sen­ate when de­bate on or­ders con­cern­ing Cus­toms im­port du­ty (Caribbean Com­mon Mar­ket) and Ex­cise du­ty (al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co prod­ucts) were to be de­bat­ed. The or­ders stemmed from tax in­creas­es, in­clud­ing on­line tax­es, in the 2017 bud­get de­liv­ered in Sep­tem­ber.

While the or­ders were on the agen­da, Leader of Gov­ern­ment's Sen­ate Busi­ness, Franklin Khan, an­nounced they would not be de­bat­ed. He re­vealed Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived an opin­ion from the Trea­sury So­lic­i­tor which he read out.

The So­lic­i­tor stat­ed that "in the in­ter­im, I'm of the view the pro­vi­sion­al col­lec­tion of tax­es or­der 2016 con­tin­ues in op­er­a­tion and will con­tin­ue in op­er­a­tion un­til Fi­nance Bill 3 and the rel­e­vant or­ders 2016 com­pletes its full pas­sage of the Par­lia­ment and the Act is as­sent­ed to by the Pres­i­dent.

"Please note this process must be com­plet­ed with­in the four-month time frame, be­gin­ning Oc­to­ber 29 2016 and end­ing Feb­ru­ary 19, 2017. Dur­ing this time, I'm of the view it is per­mis­si­ble for the State to col­lect and con­tin­ue to col­lect on­line tax­es and the rest."

Khan said that meant "we have some time. I want to give the Sen­ate time to study the pro­vi­sions in de­tail be­fore we re­con­vene the de­bate." He pro­posed the Sen­ate be ad­journed to a date to be fixed.

But Mark ob­ject­ed, say­ing Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing an er­ror. He called for the Trea­sury So­lic­i­tor's opin­ions to be pro­duced.

"We have ex­treme dif­fi­cul­ty with that po­si­tion, giv­en that the ex­pe­ri­ence and prac­tice of the Par­lia­ment over the years is to deal with these mat­ters ac­cord­ing to law," Mark added.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir al­so said he was sur­prised.

"Gov­ern­ment is say­ing there is a le­gal opin­ion but there could be a con­trary le­gal opin­ion al­so," he said.

Khan promised to pro­duce the le­gal opin­ion.

When the mat­ter was put to a vote, 19 vot­ed in favour of ad­journ­ing, in­clud­ing Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Ian Roach, Sophia Chote, David Small and Paul Richards.

Ma­habir vot­ed with Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors against ad­journ­ing. In­de­pen­dents Tau­rel Shrikissoon, Stephen Creese and Jen­nifer Raf­foul ab­stained.

Mark lat­er told re­porters the or­ders stip­u­lat­ed they had to be sub­mit­ted in 21 days and yes­ter­day was the 28th day. He said Im­bert couldn't uni­lat­er­al­ly im­pose the tax­es with­out Par­lia­ment sanc­tion, though he not­ed the Sen­ate didn't have pow­er to stop the mon­ey bill. He ques­tioned why the or­ders were put on the agen­da if the Trea­sury So­lic­i­tor's opin­ion said oth­er­wise.

Im­bert, sub­se­quent­ly clar­i­fy­ing the sit­u­a­tion, said: "Sen­a­tor Mark is mis­tak­en. These par­tic­u­lar or­ders deal with cus­toms and ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co. The law sim­ply re­quires them to be sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment with­in 21 days of their pub­li­ca­tion, which was done last week. We now have un­til Feb­ru­ary 2017 to de­bate them in the Sen­ate.

"These tax­es (cus­toms/ex­cise du­ties) on al­co­hol and to­bac­co aren't con­tained in the bill be­fore the Sen­ate and are per­fect­ly le­gal. Rather than be­ing in the bill, the tax­es are dealt with via the or­ders pub­lished in the Gazette on No­vem­ber 20, 2016. Once the or­ders are pub­lished and sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment with­in 21 days of pub­li­ca­tion, the tax­es are col­lectible and le­gal."

He said Gov­ern­ment had four months from No­vem­ber 20, 2016 to pass the Pro­vi­sion­al Col­lec­tion of Tax­es Bill which deals with Gov­ern­ment sav­ings bonds, the "mil­lion­aires' tax" and oth­er mea­sures.


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