Member of Parliament George Pantophlet wants to know if everyone is being treated equally. After an operation that is akin to pulling teeth it was revealed that 25.9 million guilders is owed in fees which date as far back as 2001 to present.
What is interesting is that in one of the daily newspapers in an article it states and let me quote" Efforts will be made by the Finance Ministry to begin collecting the outstanding amounts" end of quote. We are talking about 12 years and for all intent and purposes it appears as if nothing was being done to collect this astronomical amount of money which is almost 6% of the Budget. Furthermore if one would do their calculations they will come to the conclusion that we talking amount an amount of about 2 million guilders annually. The Member of Parliament said that he is meeting persons on a regular basis who are receiving assessments as far back as 1998 and are not given much time to pay. One of them who have a sole proprietorship was assessed for amount of around 20.000 guilders for the period of 1997 to date. The Receiver’s told them that it has to be paid in two installments. This is ludicrous. Then my question would be in how many installments is the 25.9 million guilders supposed to be paid over a period of 12 years? The Member of Parliament says that this is the problem he has with the manner in which the receiver’s office does its collection. But he understands the politics and so call hands off by government. He can remember when a former employee of the island receiver’s went to collect outstanding taxes from a particular resort and was told hands off. This employee ended up being sent to the Netherlands to further their studies. They are presently on the island qualified but not functioning because of politics. And to make matters worse more taxes are coming. The cost way will cost because if one was following the meeting on the 2012 Budget the Minister of Public Works Theo Heyliger in a question posed to him by my person on the cost way said that there is no toll at this time. Finally let me answer my own question: No everyone is not treated equally.