| Head Tax Law and the Possibilities of Case in Court |
| Fri, June 26, 2015 |
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| The Cruise Ship Passenger Tax and Validation Bill was also passed through all its stages today. Now, this is a bill to validate the head tax - which as you may recall is being argued in the Supreme court this very week. So how does the legislation interact with the ongoing proceedings in court? Well, it's interesting - because of the possibilities that the lawsuit raises:..
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"What is does, is of course, it ensures that there can be no disruption in terms of the cruise industry. If Mr. Feinstein have succeeded in getting a court adjudication that the head tax is invalid, until we could have corrected that we couldn't pay FSTV and they would no doubt close that village. So we wanted to avoid that and once this passes we'll achieve that result, but that's not the end of the case. Apart from the question of wanting to have collection of the Head Tax declared illegal as well as I understood Feinstein is also arguing that the entire contract between the Government of Belize and FSTV is illegal and that in fact we do want to see play out and quite frankly I don't want in fact appear to be looking to take on FSTV but if the court rule in favor of Mr. Feinstein, that would certainly allow us to see our way far more clearly."
Jules Vasquez
"And in fact you saw the contract that your Government signed. So if it were to fall by the way side?"
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"A brand new ball game. We would then feel that we could say to FSTV, listen we are going to find a way to proceed with the construction of the new facility. What's holding us back now, well a number of things but in particular from the point of view of FSTV is the contractual exclusivity. So, if the court says no, that has to go, then the options available to the Government becomes far more wide ranging."
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