Whilst our lead story headline states that Premier Hon. McKeeva Bush is bringing in taxation he will argue that it is no such thing.

However, whatever you call something, it doesn’t change what it is. A rose is a flower and so his “Community Enhancement Fee” is a form of taxation. In fact it is an income tax as it is calculated on the incomes and taken from the earnings of all work-permit holders paid more than $20,000 per year. I will be interested in his definition of the differences between my “tax” and his “fee”.

The premier’s Progression of the 2012/13 Budget Statement also imposes a fee of 5% on certain categories of employment payable by the company.

Although the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth office wanted a cut back of some 500-700 civil service workers in order to balance the budget the premier has refused to do this. Instead:

• any newly recruited Civil Servant will be required to contribute to both their pension and health-care costs;

• existing Civil Servants will also be required to contribute to their health-care costs from their remuneration; and

• spouses of Civil Servants that enjoy health-care coverage from the Cayman Islands National Insurance Company (CINICO), will now be required to pay for such coverage.

What I find strange is that I thought there was a moratorium on any new recruitment of civil servants, or has that been dropped? So, if there is anything put in the budget regarding civil service recruitment ………….

Employers of non-Caymanian workers and those employees will no longer be required to contribute to a compulsory pension scheme.

The statement also said there would be savings in the public sector such as cuts in marketing and the centralisation of procurement. He announced the sale of the RCIPS helicopter and said this was based on recommendations from the Expenditure Review Committee.

I wonder what the Police Commissioner has to say about that?

Mr. Bush refused to reduce government grants to Seamen/Veterans benefits, Social Services, such as the Elderly and Handicapped Persons benefits, temporary rental assistance and temporary financial assistance for persons who find themselves unemployed, Education Council Scholarships, grants to Community programmes such as apprenticeship programmes and church related programmes.

However, there has been no announcement as to how the income tax – whoops sorry, Community Enhancement Fee, is to be retrieved into the governments coffers and how much paperwork and administration costs will have to be borne by the rest of us for it to work. One media house through their “inside sources” put the revenue collection figure at around $50 million. But that depends on how many work permit holders will stay. Most will be on contract and one of the major attractions is all their wages are theirs as there is no tax or community enhancement fees to be deducted. In contract cases this will have to be borne by the Employer unless he has a clause in the small print covering such an eventuality outside his control.

Unfortunately all this money to be saved is only an estimate and depends on the economy and business prosperity either staying as it is or, as optimistically forecast, improve. With a civil service cut we would know exactly how much money we would save.