CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

So­ca artiste and pres­i­dent of the Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la, has poured cold wa­ter on the pro­pos­al for the coun­try to earn rev­enue from lo­cal artistes who per­form abroad.

The plan was re­vealed dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment meet­ing yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Pre­cil­la said when it comes to artistes, whether per­form­ing lo­cal­ly or abroad, it is up to the artistes them­selves to file their tax­es and pay their dues just like any­body else and like any oth­er busi­ness.

“So I am not sure in terms of what they are look­ing at putting in place when every­one knows they al­ready have a tax sys­tem in place in terms of every­one play­ing their role in pay­ing their per­son­al tax­es,” he said.

He added, what they should prob­a­bly do in­stead of try­ing to put some­thing new in place, is to run pro­grammes to ed­u­cate the artistes on how to for­malise them­selves as a busi­ness en­ti­ty and how to go about pay­ing their tax­es. He said it might be a case of a lack of knowl­edge in that as­pect ver­sus them not want­i­ng to pay.

But Pre­cil­la al­so ex­pressed the view that Gov­ern­ment has not done much for the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

“Be­fore the Gov­ern­ment looks to start tax­ing the artistes they should ask them­selves what have they done for the artistes or are do­ing for the artistes or the en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre as a whole,” he said.

Pre­cil­la ques­tioned what struc­tures are in place for the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor it­self.

“Are there any pro­grammes to help de­vel­op these artistes, to ed­u­cate them on any­thing? When an artiste gets sick, as you saw with many artistes when they get old­er, they have to be rais­ing a bar-b-que or some­thing for their med­ical health.

“Do we have any sys­tem in place to teach these artistes how to man­age their mon­ey, and how to make them­selves in­to a busi­ness en­ti­ty? It doesn’t have that,” Pre­cil­la said.

He said the plan should not be to tax artistes alone, “but try to de­vel­op them in­stead of just try­ing to take from them be­cause they are cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors.”