Philipsburg:--- Minister of Finance Roland Tuitt announced on Wednesday during the Council of Ministers' press briefing that he received a quotation from SOAB on the cost of an investigation into the TAXAND contract that was awarded by the former Minister of Finance without a bidding process being conducted. Minister Tuitt said while he has the figures he could not release it to the media because he has to discuss it with the Council of Ministers and the council would then have to approve the quotation before SOAB can begin investigating the TAXAND contract.2012 Budget Process Completed with CFT --- Parliament may have to work during recess to make amendments to Budget.
The Minister also told reporters that the processing of the 2012 budget has been completed with the CFT and government met the deadlines of the CFT regarding the additional questions they asked.
Minister Tuitt said that he is now working with the Members of Parliament to see if they are willing to attend Parliamentary meetings during the recess to ratify the amendments that were made to the 2012 budget. With the amendments that were made, the Minister said that the budget will remain at 432 million guilders. Tuitt said government had to make the amendments because of certain taxes that were not going to be collected. Those are the taxes of the foreign investors on St. Maarten, the one million guilders succession taxes that cannot be collected and the COLA payments which amounted to 5.7 million which was not included in the 2012 budget also the justice department which had 7.1 million guilders. Amendments, Tuitt said were made to remove the succession tax -1 million guilders, profit tax -1million guilders, income tax -21 million guilders, and also the transfer tax -1 million guilders.
The Finance Ministry also made the following amendments, the government has +17 million guilders in Turn over Taxes, +5 million guilders in wage taxes, + 2.6 million guilders gasoline taxes, and an additional one million guilders in court fees. The Minister further explained that the 2012 budget now has a surplus of 1.6 million guilders. The COLA payments he said was added as personnel costs because there were monies available for the hiring of staff members. Tuitt said when the 2012 budget is completely finalized the department will focus on preparing the 2013 budget.
