Former Chamber President Says New Taxes Will Not Make Problem Go Away

Kay Menzies

Businesswoman and influential past president, Kay Menzies, addressed today the issue of increased taxation as a measure to settle debts.  In her view, taxes are not the answer; instead government should grow the economy.  Menzies says you can’t hold on to debt, because it won’t go away.

Kay Menzies, Managing Director, Karl H. Menzies

“Any time you hear that we have another payment to make or another debt to repay, there is always going to be concern because the obvious go to point is that there will be an increase is taxation. That is a question, always. My submission as a business person is that the answer to that is the expansion of the economy because let me put it this way. When you are going to tax people, more and more people are going to evade taxation so you are going to have less and less people actually paying taxes, which means that you are looking at taxes going up and up and that is impossible. At some point in time, you have to realize that the number of people who form the tax base, the amount of people, has to expand. How do you do that? You do that by encouraging businesses to form, encouraging them to do well…you encourage the economy to grow in short.  But when it comes to making these payments, the payments are a problem…they are a huge problem, but the way….you can’t make them go away per say. You can try and hold them as much as you like, you can’t make them go away. So instead of making them go away, the idea is to meet it with a larger economy that can absorb the shock a little better.”