Dear Editor,
The Minister of Finance wants to collect a government departure tax from people departing the country from the airport or from the harbour. There are whole lot more ways to leave the island, but he will have to decide that also.
My first question as answer to that is, when the Minister of Finance is going to have the controllers in the finance department go into those food-supplying businesses and do the necessary. When are they going to forbid the owners of supermarkets from raising the prices of the same products every time they go into the same container or warehouse and take out some more cases from the same shipment. When are they going to control the outdated products on the shelves and make sure that they can be identified so that the shopper can decide whether to buy it or not with conditions (reduced price); this or take them off the shelves.
So, there are a lot more things that continue to weigh on the people and no one makes an effort to remedy them. The pensioner did not have a choice whether to collect their money at the receivers or the bank, It was decide at bank. No one cared what the bank charges were. No one cared whether the pensioners could go around with a computer or not. Collect it at the bank or by the ATM, whether there were bank charges or not, whether there was a certain risk or not. For instance, because the banks are not open on weekends, if I need money for church collection in the weekend I would have to go to an ATM and there would be charges for that (for instance 52x 0,50) not forgetting the one per cent involving US$. Pensioners pay taxes, pensioners pay the same fare on the bus and I can continue with all the things which the pensioners, whose income has been almost halved, have to pay equal to everyone else going forward. The old age pension is a laugh. A mere 22 per cent of the working population pay taxes including the pensioners.
When we continue to profess that the older employees are more conscientious, more responsible and produce more than the youth and we have extended the pension age, why should we have to continue paying for the non-producers (taxes). Because the pensioners’ salaries have not been adjusted over the years, I believe that it is more than time that government have others pay taxes and exempt the pensioners, who all have paid into the pension fund for no less than 35 years or more, from government departure taxes, bank charges etc.
We are the pioneers and should be treated as such. We brought and kept St. Maarten to where it is today so that so many others could enjoy and earn well and even better than expected while, we, the pensioners continue to struggle. While we are on the subject of taxes, may I suggest that there be a separate database for persons with working permits from that for persons with resident permits both by Immigration as well as at the Census offices. Why? So that no working permits should be reissued /extended without a declaration stating that one’s taxes have been paid.
By the way, I think that Minister Lee has been in government long enough to know that it is irresponsible not to have an eye specialist on the island and still not do anything about it. Again it is in the interest of the people and nothing is being done about it.
Yet another reason for the people to think of that now common phrase, “What's in it for me?”
Russell A. Simmons
