FINANCE Minister Dr Nigel Clarke on Tuesday punched holes in Opposition Leader Mark Golding’s budget presentation, accusing him of presenting a distorted picture of the Government’s economic performance, particularly in the area of tax collection, and described him as being deceptive.

Clarke, in closing the 2024/25 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives, took particular aim at Golding’s declaration last week that, despite the Government’s claim that it had imposed no new taxes over the past several fiscal years, the taxes being collected from the Jamaican people have risen dramatically under this Government.

“Tax collected is now over 28 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product). Jamaicans are taxed much more under this JLP Government. Over the four financial years 2021/22 through 2024/25, tax collections have increased by $419 billion… That is an increase of 66 per cent, which is way more — in fact, more than double — the accumulated inflation of 31 per cent over that four-year period,” Golding said in his presentation on March 19.

However, Clarke came to Parliament on Tuesday armed with a chart countering Golding’s claim, and accused the Opposition leader of deliberately omitting the period when tax revenue fell due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Opposition leader puts up a chart that purports to show revenue growth over the period of this Government. I have not seen a more deceptive chart in this House than this,” Clarke said.

Pointing out that Golding’s chart shows the financial year 2015/2016 but omits the years 2016 through to 2021, the finance minister said, “So he’s showing a chart for revenues over this Administration that deliberately leaves out the COVID year and the year after, and then he shows 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24 projections — it’s like he’s playing peek-a-boo.”

“Why would he do this? Why would he hide the period 2016/17 to 2020/21? Red card for him, red card,” Clarke said, using the football terminology signalling when a player is ejected from a game for committing two bookable offences, or commits an egregious foul, or breaks a rule.

“He then says that revenues have doubled over nine years. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that the point? That revenues [are] going up in an environment of no new taxes?” Clarke asked.

The finance minister said that no Government formed by the People’s National Party has ever presided over a nine-year stretch of continuously increasing tax revenues, in real terms, without the imposition of any new taxes.

“They are simply confused and, in their confusion, present charts that skip over years and are therefore deceptive,” he told the House to loud desk-banging by his Government colleagues.

He said that Golding was being “barefaced, misleading and disingenuous” when he stated in his presentation last week that additional taxes had been collected from Jamaicans over the financial years 2021/22 through 2024/25,

“First of all, there aren’t additional taxes; there are additional tax revenues. And the deception is that he is counting from the depth of COVID — when revenues declined by $73 billion in one year, the largest amount in Jamaican history — but he is not telling you that,” Clarke said.

He said the recovery in revenue was what allowed the Government to allocate $200 billion more to public sector compensation, implement the SPARK Programme, buy 100 buses for the State-owned Jamaica Urban Transit Company, purchase 50 garbage trucks, give income tax breaks, raise the pension exemptions, and implement the reverse income tax credit.

“We could not do any of those things without revenue,” he said.

“Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false or incomplete information that leads them to question what they know to be true. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, or even their sanity,” Clarke said.

“The Opposition leader also advances the false argument that revenue increases are as a result of indirect taxation. Clearly he is forgetting that this Administration reduced GCT by 1.5 percentage points.

“Revenue increases are as a result of increased economic activity. When you look at the growth in personal income tax, though we raised the threshold substantially to 1.5 million, income tax revenue has grown by $190 billion or 145 per cent cumulatively, or a compounded annual rate of 10.5 per cent per annum over the period,” he argued.

He also said the revenues have increased “and we have had 30 quarters of economic growth”.