Archive of posts from Saba-News.com Archive Saba News
The list of basic commodities imported into the public entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba exempt from sales tax ABB has been expanded, a press release from the tax office of the Dutch Caribbean said.
This was decided after consultation between the public entities of the Dutch Caribbean and the State Secretary of Finance. At the moment there is already exemption from ABB for imported bread, rice, grain and potatoes. This exemption will now also apply to milk and dairy products, bird eggs, natural honey, vegetables, roots and tubers, fruit, coffee, tea, maté and spices, grains and various types of flour, malt, starch, wheat gluten, fats and oils, sugar and confectionery, several preparations of grain, flour, starch or milk and cakes.
This concerns in particular the basic commodities and not the further processing of these products, such as canned fruit or canned soups. The extension of the above exemptions goes into effect on January 1, 2013.
Source: The Daily Herald, November 1, 2012
This is a good move and should benefit many of us living on Saba, especially the lower income braket. The SBA and other business organisations have long lobbied for this. Eventually something moves in the right direction. Thank you Mr. Weekers and all who have worked hard to make all these positive changes possible.
Unfortunatly I have to add something to my previous remarks: I just noticed that customs is holding training sessions for the Asycuda program. Now it will be mandatory for all businesses. From January 01, 2013 every business has to do the Asycuda by it’s own BEFORE the merchandise arrives and/or use a broker (who is the broker on Saba and how much will that cost extra?). Not enough with this, they also introduce a far more complicated system with hundreds of codes which creates a lot more administration for the individual business and person who ordered the items. My guess is that this will eat up all the “benefit” for exempt items due to higher administration costs to the businesses and raise costs in general. The advantage of this well ment “benefits” to lower prices for the general population will end up being useless and no lower prices will reach the customer. I have hoped for some common sense from customs, but I was obviously wrong. How more crazy and unreasonable can it get? Where is the department of economic affairs to address this nonsense, and why is this needed in the first place?