Funerals up to $100,000 now tax-free
Finance Minister Omar Davies yesterday announced concessions in the General Consumption Tax (GCT) paid on funeral services offered by undertakers, and a number of items used by farmers.
In terms of the funeral services, Dr Davies said that as of June 1, all funeral service packages costing up to $100,000 will be exempted from GCT.
He also announced that effective June 1 as well, farm items including animal feeds, machetes, planting material, such as seeds, fishing apparatus, fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides would be reverted to zero-rating status.
Zero-rated means that the goods and service are taxable at zero per cent and therefore GCT is not charged.
Davies said that the package, the only tax concessions tabled yesterday in his “no new tax” budget, would cost the government $296 million in revenues.
The issue of the GCT on funeral services was raised during last week’s meetings of the Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives by Opposition MP Olivia “Babsy” Grange, who told the minister that it was a matter of “life and death for poor people” and urged him to stop “taxing the dead”.
Davies, however, warned yesterday against the possibility of “every funeral of half-a-million dollars being broken up into five hundred-thousand bills”.
He said that the request for the zero rating of the agricultural items was made by Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke. The Opposition spokesman on agriculture, Senator Anthony Johnson, also raised the issue in his contribution to the state of the nation debate in the Senate last month.
According to Johnson, last year when the government announced that agricultural equipment would no longer be zero-rated, but would be GCT exempted, “it sounded like help”. He said, however, that the outcome was that the GCT was imposed on supplies, equipment and the provision of services such as the haulage of cane which were previously tax-free.
The change announced by Davies yesterday will revert these items to zero-rated status, which is expected to ensure that they are not taxed.
