Losses Can Be Made Up
Darrell Bradley
It is estimated that the municipal government stands to collect one million dollars less; monies which Mayor Bradley says will be realized through other means. One option to regain those monies is through the sale of personalized license plates which would only allow CitCo to recover half of those losses.
Reporter
“What is the projected shortfall in council revenue from trade license and how will you offset that being that you’re already juggling?”
Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor
“I believe that I did. At one point when we looked at this I said that the projected shortfall would have been one million dollars. Currently about four point two, maybe four point three million dollars or four point six million dollars in trade license revenue per annum. Our greatest analysis has shown that that may fall to one million dollars. On revised numbers and projections that may shrink to about three hundred thousand dollars… Part of our analysis includes [the fact] that we know specific businesses who will get a discount and who will not. We will and we have done a quite thorough and detailed analysis and projection to see what exactly would our loss be in relation to this regime and we know the specific businesses and the categories of businesses that we would experience a loss. So, for example, I shared with you that larger businesses, warehouses, those banks, telecommunications companies, large retail stores, they will experience a reduction because the highest tax basis in the legislation is sixty thousand dollars. So that to the extent that somebody pays eighty, ninety, a hundred or two hundred, they would go down to sixty thousand. We have been thinking about making up the shortfall. I pointed out the issue of selling the personalized license plates. That’s projected to raise five hundred thousand dollars. One of the reasons why we have been promoting that, that represents increase cash flow when you’re not burdened. It’s not another tax. So that if you want personalized license plates, if you can afford to pay it, then you pay and that will represent increase flows for us.”
