By wiredja Online News

MONTEGO BAY, April 26, 2017 – US President Donald Trump has ditched plans to fund his border wall from the budget, in favour of a plan to have congress place a 2% tax on remittances to countries mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Building the wall, paid for by Mexico, was a key campaign commitment of US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
But the BBC says the president’s close adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has said funding for the wall would be left out of a budget measure that must be passed by Friday.
However, a republican congressman is proposing an amendment to the US Electronic Fund Transfer Act to impose a fee for remittance transfers to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Representative Mike Rogers, of Alabama’s 3rd Congressional District, has introduced HR 1813, titled Border Wall Funding Act of 2017 in the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for a two per cent fee to be charged on persons sending money to recipients in 42 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to the bill, the remittance fees would be submitted to the US Treasury to be expended for the purpose of building President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the US-Mexico border.
“A remittance transfer provider shall collect from the sender of such remittance transfer a remittance fee equal to two per cent of the United States dollar amount to be transferred (excluding any fees or other charges imposed by the remittance transfer provider),” the bill reads.
It provides for a penalty of not more than US$500,000 or twice the value of the funds involved in the remittance transfer — whichever is greater — or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both; for people found guilty of evading the transaction fee.
If passed, the bill could have a heavy impact on remittance inflow to Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is estimated by Pew Research that Jamaica received US$2.338 billion in global remittances in 2015, with US$1.669 billion of that coming directly from the US, and another US$500 million from Canada and the United Kingdom.
The largest destination for remittances from the US is Mexico, which Pew Research estimates was equal to US$24 billion in 2015.
A two per cent tax is estimated to net more than US$2 billion a year if it applied to all money regardless of who’s sending it.

IMAGE: United States President Donald Trump

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