ABOUT two months ago, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan, announced that a 14% tax would be added onto the school fees of private schools. As someone who spent the latter years of my education in private institutions and who currently sends my child to one, I was livid that the government was taxing something as essential as education.

My reasons for attending private schools were different, but I send my child to private school only because she receives better teaching there. She spent a year in the public education system, learning nothing other than what we taught her at home, so we decided to try a change and now she comes home with new knowledge almost every day. This inability to successfully teach students is not shared by all public schools of course, most times it comes down to the individual child and the help they receive from home, but there is no denying that the public school system is extremely flawed. Some of our best teachers enter the private sector because they are paid more, have more resources in school available to them and often they have smaller classes to deal with. But then again, with the absence of regularisation, our private institutions are also extremely flawed.

Knowing of the advantages and disadvantages of both private and public education and my biases concerning both, I decided to take some time before addressing this issue. There have been fierce calls to repeal the tax but despite the call of the people, the Government is still moving ahead with it. I have been asking myself for a while now whether I am for the tax or not and in a nutshell I am not.

No one likes taxes, but it is understood we need them as they help to offset the cost of services provided to the people by the government. But we should tax industries, which place the most pressure on the government, rather than the poor scrimping and saving, and taxes should not be doled out willy-nilly. Particularly when it is being applied on something as important as education, proper consultations must be had, and it must be ensured that the burden does not fall on the students and their parents.

When faced with calls for removal of the tax and a petition of more than 14, 000 signatures against it, Minister Jordan explained that out of 57 private schools, eight are “tax compliant,” suggesting this was the reason for the tax. Later however, he went on to say that he did not “want a link to be seen between the imposition of the 14% on private tuition and the recalcitrance of schools, as it relates to paying or filing the income tax.” While it might not have started out that way, the fact that the government is the one repeatedly raising this shows that it might have been a determining factor in keeping the tax.

President David Granger was quoted as saying that while the government was not looking to put pressure on private entities as it related to non-compliance with VAT, there was need to ensure that “all Guyanese pay their fair share.” The fact that the Government chose to implement a new tax that would fall on the shoulders of the students rather than the ‘rogue” private schools they keep bringing attention to shows their continuous disconnect with the working class. Why should the poor have to pay for the non-compliance of the rich?

A mere suggestion of the private schools to absorb the cost will not cut it. If I am in a business to make profits, why should I then lower my profits because of your mere suggestion? While it certainly is right to want private schools to absorb the 14% tax as they make ridiculous profits off the backs of both the rich and poor struggling students, it is a misguided one, particularly since it seems as if this was never the intention. What the government should be doing is not suggesting that private schools absorb these taxes, but reworking their language so that there are no loopholes through which the poor and working-class students struggling to gain an education in private institutions are further exploited.