Gopee-Scoon: Too many business owners not paying taxes

Too many business owners are living comfortable lives without paying their taxes. Those were the sentiments of Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon, speaking at an event to mark the first anniversary of Pro-Powder at its industrial facility in Cunupia on Wednesday.

Pro-Powder is a powder-coating company: it applies a dry powdered finish to a wide array of metal products instead of the traditional liquid paint.

Gopee-Scoon encouraged anyone currently engaging in tax avoidance to stop and begin paying their fair share so that government can then allocate the taxes to manage the country.

"Small to medium businesses contribute largely to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Around 28 per cent of our GDP is generated from these businesses," she pointed out.

Among this group of GDP generators, "tax avoidance is such a big thing," Gopee-Scoon added.

She said she was delighted to be at the anniversary of Pro-Powder, since she said it was rare for small start-up companies to make it through the kind of challenges that she heard Pro-Powder had experienced.

"From what I know very few small businesses actually survive: from what I understand the figure is just about 20 per cent," Gopee-Scoon said.

Among the challenges listed were financial difficulties. Gopee-Scoon said start-up businesses faced two major stuggles – the securing of funds and the proper use of the funds they had.

Gopee-Scoon said government was aware that legislation was needed to protect small companies from risking the loss of their non-movable assets such as buildings and homes when seeking loans from banks. This is known as a security over collateral legislation and has been implemented in Jamaica.

The anniversary event held by Pro-Powder was intended to announce and introduce its business and services to the public. The company's managing director Ryan Ferreira said the company was the only one of its kind and no other companies that specialise in powder-coating could be compared to Pro-Powder in both size and expertise.

Ferreira said people had called out his organisation for claiming to be something it is not, citing the fact that many people already did powder coating in TT but he said Pro-Powder was the only company that dealt only with powder coating and nothing else.

"We are not selling Tiidas, we are selling BMWs," said Ferreira, after Pro-Powder was allegedly compared on social media to small operators who did powder coating in their backyards.

The process of powder coating involves mixing several ingredients into a uniform powder similar to baking flour. The powder is then applied to the object, typically metal, by spraying.