Dear Editor,

So much has been in the news this week about the 200,000 households in Jamaica who steal electricity. Not good, with the number rising, but a distinction needs to be made between those who won’t pay, and those who can’t.

The first group are freeloaders, nurtured by politicians who arrange or allow it to obtain votes. The second are the working and non-working poor for whom a PATH-type social intervention programme is required, providing a basic amount of electricity free of charge, funded by…the taxpayer.

But stop there. I don’t mean the existing taxpayers but the many tax evaders, both individuals and the 90 per cent of businesses, both income tax evaders and property tax evaders. The amount not paid by tax evaders could be as large as 30 per cent of current tax revenue; that’s 30 per cent of $400 billion, which comes to $120 billion per year.

If each of the electricity non-payers uses $5,000 worth of electricity per month — not all are profligate — that is $60,000 per year, per household, giving an overall total of $12 billion per year; just one tenth of the tax evasion total. (This total concurs with the JPS estimate of about J$1 billion per month).

Is it coincidental that the tax thieves are, on average, much better off than the electricity non-payers in the garrison communities? Is it coincidental that the only IMF target missed this quarter was tax collection? Is the deafening silence this week about tax evasion, and the deafening noise about electricity theft, a coincidence? I wonder what Portia Simpson Miller and Peter Phillips can think of that can generate as much conversation about tax cheats as JPS has done regarding electricity non-payers? Or would too many of their friends be found wanting?

Paul Ward

Campaign for Social & Economic Justice

Kingston 7

pgward72@gmail.com