Workers’ Party reiterates stance on GST Hike: “A lack of clarity, transparency and justification”

On Monday, Workers’ Party (WP) reiterated their stance with regards to the proposed plan to raise Goods and Services Tax (GST), saying that the latter lacked “clarity, transparency and justification”.

They added that the issue was discussed once again by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat at the ‘Building our Future of Singapore Together’ dialogue session held on June 15.

In the video they shared on their social media page, party Chair Sylvia Lim was seen saying, “I think it is ridiculous for the government to expect us, as a responsible party to support something where all the information is still not available, and we don’t have a crystal ball”.

The reasons given by party for being unable to support the proposed hike were a lack of clarity on long-term projected government income and spending, a lack of consideration of alternative revenue streams, and, a lack in details on the effect on low and middle income Singaporeans and on the total GST offset package.

In their video, the Workers’ Party also added that they asked the government to consider other options to raise revenue to meet increased spending. Some of their proposed solutions were to raise the cap on NIRC, or on reserve investment returns. They also suggested that land sales proceeds at a small capped fraction could be used.

Showing a photo of the poll in Parliament where Members of Parliament (MPs) were asked for their approval on the financial policy of the government for the Fiscal Year 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019, eight out of the total voted ‘no’. These were all Workers’ Party MPs.

The Workers’ Party received a huge amount of support on their post, with over 24,000 views of the video. Of this, there were over 1000 reactions and more than 100 comments. /TISG