Dear Editor,

I wish to correct information I gave to Deacon Ronnie Thwaites regarding the tax-free allowance on burials on Independent Talk on November 22, which was stated as $150,000. The correct figure for the exemption of GCT should have been $100,000. I discovered my error when I reviewed the tape.

I was hoping that the Minister of Finance and Planning Audley Shaw and the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Olivia “Babsy” Grange would have reviewed the exemption from GCT on burials to $200,000. After all, while in Opposition they were instrumental, along with myself in my letters to the editors, to get the then Minister of Finance and Planning Dr Omar Davies to exempt burial cost of $100,000 and under from GCT.

The present Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture in Parliament, as reported in the Observer on April 28, 2006, told the then Minister of Finance and Planning that it was a matter of “life and death” for the poor people and urged him to “stop taxing the dead”. Today, after three years of her party being in power, the bereaved families are still being taxed. The present Minister of Finance and Planning Audley Shaw, while in Opposition, called for the removal of GCT on burials and I, in my letters to the editor, called for the funeral industry to be zero-rated or rolled back from the GCT rate to 15 per cent. This would allow the funeral homes to claim their GCT input taxes.

There is only one local component used in the industry that is 100 per cent Jamaican, and that is lumber. Local casket hardware, which is made from smelted recycled aluminium overseas, has to be smelted with kerosene of which the raw material, oil, is imported per barrel from abroad.

A hearse attracts a 17 per cent rate of SCT, although some of them are manufactured flex fuel to use 85 per cent ethanol and are fuel-efficient. These vehicles, if properly maintained and serviced, will outperform any four-cylinder vehicle up to 3000 CC. Upon application to the Minister of Finance and Planning, permission may be sought to pay 83 per cent aggregate duty.

I would like to implore Minister Shaw to look at the GCT exemption with a view to increasing it to $200,000 as a Christmas gift to the bereaved families.

Joseph M Cornwall Snr

tranquillityfh@yahoo.com