Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday accused the government of trying to play down the “humun-gous tax burdens” that the proposed 2017 national budget would place on citizens, while estimating that the measures would net an increase of roughly $25 billion dollars in Value-Added Tax (VAT) alone.
Jagdeo dubbed the figure a “conservative estimate” in a response issued last evening to a statement from the Department of Public Information in which it was claimed that new tax measures announced by Minister of Finance Winston Jordan would see the injection of $9.595 billion into the economy.