Gail Alexan­der

Re­cent tax hikes on beer and cig­a­rettes have not af­fect­ed con­sump­tion of these two items and have ac­tu­al­ly con­tributed to in­creased Gov­ern­ment rev­enue from the two ar­eas, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day.

But there's been no in­creased rev­enue fol­low­ing tax hikes on rum/spir­its, he added dur­ing a Sen­ate con­tri­bu­tion.

Im­bert spoke about the sit­u­a­tion, in deal­ing with or­ders to fi­nalise tax hikes on beer, cig­a­rettes and rum/spir­its. These had been an­nounced last year in the 2017 Bud­get. The or­ders ap­ply to cus­toms im­port/ex­cise du­ties on the prod­ucts in­clud­ing from the Cari­com area.

Among rea­sons was to curb ex­ces­sive con­sump­tion of cig­a­rettes par­tic­u­lar­ly. Im­bert not­ed it cost $500,000 to treat one lung can­cer case.

Im­bert said de­spite the in­creased tax­es on beer, there was no ap­par­ent de­crease in con­sump­tion, but rather, in­creased rev­enue from this area .

He said rev­enue from this item stood at $47 mil­lion over Oc­to­ber/ De­cem­ber 2015 , but rose to $55 mil­lion over the same pe­ri­od in 2016 fol­low­ing the tax hike.

Im­bert said rev­enue col­lec­tion was al­so up for cig­a­rettes de­spite high­er tax­es on the prod­uct. Rev­enue for Oc­to­ber/De­cem­ber 2015 was $50.8 mil­lion. This rose to $58 mil­lion over the same pe­ri­od in 2016, de­spite the in­creased tax­es.

But he said no such re­sponse was not­ed where rum/spir­its were con­cerned. Rev­enue for this was $57 mil­lion over Oc­to­ber/De­cem­ber 2015 and $36 mil­lion over Oc­to­ber/De­cem­ber 2016.

Im­bert said ex­ist­ing stock may have been sold off. He said a bet­ter idea may be ob­tained via rev­enue col­lec­tion from the first/sec­ond quar­ters of 2017 when he'd be able to say for cer­tain if the tax hikes re­al­ly af­fect­ed con­sump­tion.

He said beer drinkers/smok­ers didn't have wider sub­sti­tute op­tions " ...apart from a plant-like sub­stance....if you smoke and drink (beer) you don't have many op­tions un­less you get in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty."

Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment al­so not­ed an in­crease in hy­brid car im­por­ta­tion - from 20 to 453- af­ter re­cent tax con­ces­sions on that.

How­ev­er Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark slammed Gov­ern­ment on the tax or­der which he said was not de­liv­ered to Par­lia­ment with­in 21 days of an­nounce­ment, as he claimed the law stip­u­lates. He said it was de­liv­ered on No­vem­ber 15, 23 days af­ter the tax or­der was an­nounced in the 2017 Bud­get.

Fur­ther, he said the or­der as on­ly now be­ing pre­sent­ed to the Sen­ate yes­ter­day - 91 days af­ter the ini­tial an­nounce­ment.

Mark said the Op­po­si­tion couldn't sup­port any­thing il­le­gal. He called on the Gov­ern­ment to say if it would re­fund pay­ments on the tax hike made by cus­tomers, mer­chants and oth­er coun­tries which pur­chased the goods.

He said when the mat­ter was raised be­fore, Gov­ern­ment had promised to get a le­gal opin­ion on it. He said the Op­po­si­tion had ob­tained the or­der "by in­no­v­a­tive means" and found that the Trea­sury So­lic­i­tor who gave it had ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to check with Par­lia­ment of­fi­cers on the mat­ter al­so.