A senior hotelier said the tourism sector is "satisfied" with the government's response on the majority of concerns that were put to it by the sector over value-added tax (VAT) legislation, and remains confident that "there's still a time frame to effect the requests".
Speaking a day after Parliament passed legislation to allow for VAT to be implemented on January 1, 2015, Robert Sands, Baha Mar's senior vice president of administration and external affairs, said the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) and the government "have reached a final position on a number of the positions [the BHTA] put before [the government]".
"We're satisfied they've been addressed positively. We are very encouraged by the movement of the government and the government has also assured us they'll continue to review the outstanding submissions that we've made," said Sands.
He said that "productive discussions" were held between the two sides in the weeks leading up to the passage of the VAT legislation on Wednesday.
In an interview with Guardian Business in July following the release of the latest version of the VAT legislation, which took into account a number of concerns raised by the private sector, Sands said that the tourism sector could not comment on the extent to which it was satisfied with the new framework as it was still awaiting "clarity" with respect to a laundry list of concerns over VAT.
Sands suggested the BHTA was waiting for the government to deal with "nine or 10" points in the legislation that were still deemed problematic by the sector.
Yesterday, Sands said the sector was pleased with the government's response on seven of these points.
"Obviously what we have seen is the bill and regulations but obviously there are some administrative processes that the government has to put in place to effect all of these arrangements," he added.
Sands declined to comment on the substance of the point on which the government has responded to the BHTA, or those which it has not. It is unclear at this stage if the government's response involves promises made to the sector that it will amend the legislation subsequent to its passage on Wednesday to take into consideration the sector's concerns.
Guardian Business understands that one of the issues put forward by the tourism sector was a desire to see casino gaming "zero-rated" under the VAT legislation, rather than exempted. "Zero rating" would mean that not only is VAT not charged on casino services, but the casinos would be able to reclaim VAT paid on inputs, thereby lowering their costs.
It is likely that if the government made this concession for the casino sector it may come under fire from numerous other sectors that would also find this tax-free "zero-rated" status to be preferable under VAT. The government has indicated its desire to keep such "special treatment" of sectors to a minimum, and has exempted far fewer sectors from VAT under the new version of the legislation than previously.

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