Juffa: GST needs to be monitored

By LULU MAGINDE
THERE must be a mechanism in place to ensure that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) benefits trickle down to the consumers, says Northern Governor Gary Juffa.
“Often times we assume that businesses will contribute to efforts in reducing taxes and while a few will, others will take advantage of this by not doing so,” he said.
“I think what we should really consider, is a reduction of taxes on fuel.
“Supposedly we’re an energy-producing nation, producing oil and gas so if we just look at reducing the taxes on fuels and fuel products, we would be able to transfer benefits to all consumers.”
While debating the approved amendments to the Income Tax Act last Wednesday in Parliament, Juffa asked what mechanisms were in place to ensure that the benefits reached the consumers and whether prices would be reduced per unit of product.
He said that initially, the Consumer Affairs Council (CAC), now known as the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC), was the agency responsible for effectively holding companies accountable and for receiving consumer complaints.
“Now it has been dismantled into an organisation that serves corporate interests; we pay for it but it doesn’t serve Papua New Guineans,” he said.
“CAC would be the organisation that would work to ensure that this great law that the Treasurer has brought, would be implemented in such a way, that the consumers benefitted from this rule.”
Juffa recommended a mini restructure within Treasury to develop an intelligence capacity within the Internal Revenue Commission so that they could monitor the economic and financial landscape of this nation to identify the bad taxpayers.
“When I was working there, I did my very best to introduce this but I got no help from the Government at that time or the department of personnel management,” he said.
“What we’re doing is punishing the compliant taxpayers, the good people who actually pay their taxes on time meanwhile the bad tax payers constantly get away with it.”
Juffa told The National outside of parliament that the CAC used to actively serve the interests of consumers but after the restructure, they were called the ICCC and their mandate had primarily been to regulate prices for corporate organisations.
“How can consumers know for sure that they will be benefitting from these tax breaks if for example, you’re looking at a bag of rice and the price is K10 but with an introduced tax break, it becomes K8,” he said.
“There’s no way of knowing or checking that a company has actually reduced prices.”
He said the people should be the ones to keep their leaders in check by voicing their complaints if they felt that prices weren’t necessarily being reduced after the tax breaks were introduced.