Archive of posts from Saba-News.com Archive Saba News
The tax obstacles for the transit of freight between Curacao and the Dutch Caribbean will soon be history. No later than November 1st 2012 import duties or other tax barriers no longer have to be paid for freight that is brought into one county and intended for another country.
State secretary Weekers of Finance and minister of Finance Jamaloodin of Curacao undersigned the agreement today in The Hague, in order to prevent double tax in specific situations with transboundary movement of freight.
Agreements were made about the possibility of applying (administrative) custom or trade and service warehouses, in which freight can be stored tax free, awaiting its final destination. Also agreements were made about tax free transit from Curacao to the Dutch Caribbean and vice versa and about tax free export from one country to the other.
The transit or export from one country to the other has to be proved by the interested party. Abuse can be prevented as much as possible by a proper exchange of information between both tax administrations and custom services.
Weekers is very pleased with this agreement: “I count on it that the elimination of Curacao taxes on Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius will lead to price reductions and that both citizens and businesses will benefit from this.”
Source: RCN, September 26, 2012
This is nothing new and was known already one year ago. Apart from that: the problem for Saba and Statia is also still the same: the tax-policy of St Maarten. If that would have been changed, then we would have had real news from the RCN.
I agree Rene, this is nothing new and I hope I’m right, but our “import” from Curacao is minor for Saba’s economy. Not that SXM is the only problem, but they treat their neighbors, who spend a lot of money in their new country, as they did for many years before, unfair. It was established that collecting ToT in a transit country is illigal, so please stick to the law and friendship with your neighbors and stop charging the 5% ToT. A nice twist is that the Dutch also collect 6% ABB on Saba onto the 5% ToT (which they know isn’t correct).