Years back when the Prime Minister was Finance Minister, he correctly repeated the economic tenet that reducing taxation would actually increase the exchequer’s tax take. Naturally, one has to add, with the proviso that tax abuses would be stamped out and not condoned pre or post elections. I found interesting the ex-(?) manufacturers lobbyist, ex-Central Bank of Malta governor, ex-Labour Finance Minister, ex-Parliamentary backbencher and present director on, among others, the largest listed insurance firm on the island, statement that “the recession could be around in our islands for longer than the International Monetary Fund thinks”.

Likewise revealing was his lobbying for further “assistance to selected manufacturing companies”. EU in principle abhorred state aid, given to “selected manufacturing companies” laughable if it was not the taxpayers’ money. As the case of one company with a director sitting on its board as well as that of a local listed bank getting a subvention for promising to spend an extra e100,000 in “investments”. A paltry sum that hardly buys a one-bedroomed penthouse in Sliema’s lazy corner! Subventions that are only guilty, it was claimed by the one time socialist Finance Minister (who stuck out more hard-headed Prime Ministers’ legislatures but not more economic savvy Sant’s more moderate 22 months in government) and now one of The Times regular columnist, of “fractionally” increasing the budget deficit. This without spelling out that such subsidies, notorious not just under the socialists and those who claimed to have served the nation, which seemingly have now been ruled out, whet the appetites of those manufacturers and other sector economic units not helped for similar subventions. Just note the constant lobbying by, among others, the well-connected tourist sector spokesman! After all does the ex-socialist minister and Times columnist not subscribe to the equality principle? A principle enshrined by the socialist/renegade nationalists turning Malta into a republic by derecognising the balancing influence of the Commonwealth’s head and her representative, as Head of State so that no one would be held above any other Maltese? A claim made at the time, to quote in my own words what one of the Nationalist big heads that defected from Borg Olivier’s leadership has stated? (Something no longer the case with Malta’s accession to the EU!)

In contrast, note this worthy’s constant harping on presumed abuses of social services and for means testing! No doubt those with a vested interest in an insurance firm which has seen its profits squandered by happenings at its subsidiary abroad would more than welcome any move to make the majority of Gozitans and Maltese fork out funds to purchase compulsory medical and health policies. As would any socialist credo believer who favours compulsory national insurance contributions as well as compulsory contributions from the same citizens for private health plans. This as the state health system would no longer be offering its services for free to taxpayers who underpin it but “means tested” as earning above a determined benchmark. Those who have no clever accountants or well-versed advisers in the working out of policies in the corridors of power able successfully to spirit of their income since effective exchange control was dismantled years ago! Another diatribe I take exception to by this listed firm company director, presumably writing in his personal and not board role, was that against the government’s enactment of its pre-election promise to reduce taxation from 35 per cent to 25 per cent. A renegation justified by the arch envy politics gospel of the leftists as this “would save 10 per cent in the euro earned by the bulk of the upper middle and higher income groups”. A renegation worthy of those ill fit to hold the trust of stakeholders be they citizens of national entities or mere ordinary members of other corporate bodies. Those commoners in whose name so much ink is spilt but who get the short straw with no limousines, drivers, messengers, receptionists and other small fry at their bid and without any promotion for years while salary increases of around e13,000 a month are granted to a cohort in a year where no profits were registered or dividend declared from which 35 per cent is deducted. Have not the bulk of wage earners, from successive small increments in pay over the years, and some pensioners and small holders of property and other assets, to a large extent reached the 35 per cent taxation level, while the rich and super rich if they were in another jurisdiction, could not hope to pay less than 65 per cent or 90 per cent of the millions that come their way? Is this not after all the bottom line of all the attempts to make Berlusconi’s government stamp out the super rich siphoning off earnings into tax havens?

At a time when Italy is one of the few success stories despite the international recession, is it not just to expect the large earners to pitch in – while does it not state volumes that a nine-year-old investment holding in what was year after year held out as a successful undertaking suddenly wipe out the millions of profits the parent company in a nearby jurisdiction with the blame apportioned to one ragionere?

Colin Debonos

GHAJNSIELEM