"You can't be a person buying a $40-million town house with three swimming pools, yet still when we check, you are not on the tax roll" - Prime Minister Golding.

"This can't be fair for the man or woman earning $4,000 per week, who found out that PAYE is drawn from his/her little pittance" - Prime Minister Golding.

Mr Prime Minister, in targeting people who are not paying taxes, experience has shown that what ends up happening is that the same overburdened taxpayers are the ones who have already been targeted now move to a higher level of feeling terrorised and intimidated.

The stiff tax penalties being warned of is like saying 'hang them, hang them'. But, I say, catch them, catch them first.

You cannot hang the murderer you never catch and you cannot tax the person or enterprise you do not know and cannot find. The tax burden therefore comes right back to the ones already in the net.

Single tax

What taxes do you get from a bag juice itinerant seller or even more lucrative a drug dealer, a mechanic under a tree, or a robot taxi? Zero per cent outside of the General Consumption Tax of 16.5 per cent at the shop.

I propose levelling the playing fields where there is no incentive to stay outside the tax net.

Having one single tax (GCT), no higher than 20 per cent could be integral to a stimulus package, no more preferential treatment like tax waivers at the wharf, in addition to duty-free this and duty-free that for some categories of persons contributing to gross domestic product and disregarding others.

This proposal should be looked into by actuaries and I am sure that in the long run more than enough taxes would be collected.

A single tax system would be a fair and most productive revolution of that system and Prime Minister Bruce Golding would not have to guess or wonder if the $40-million town house owner has paid his fair share of taxes.

I am, etc.,

Michael Spence

micspen2@hotmail.com

Liguanea PO, Kingston 6