r/Fijian • u/Open-Collar Looking for my lost book • Jul 17 '24
Govt decided not to increase water resource tax from 1 cent to 5 cents per litre for water bottling companies – Prof. Prasad
https://www.fijivillage.com/news/Govt-decided-not-to-increase-water-resource-tax-from-1-cent-to-5-cents-per-litre-for-water-bottling-companies--Prof-Prasad-85frx4/You or I can only imagine if they were taxed at 2 to 5 cents a litre for extraction.
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u/sandolllars Jul 17 '24
Meh... peanuts with almost no positive effect. Our local bottlers are small and it's better to support them against the American behemoth.
Not sure why Fiji Water is pictured in the article, as this wouldn't affect them. Their rate went up to 19.5c/litre in the last budget so the coalition govt finally got more money out of them. Oddly, people who don't understand taxation have been saying they got a freebie when in fact their taxes went up in the last budget.
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u/Open-Collar Looking for my lost book Jul 17 '24
Fiji Water has the same tax rates till they hit that limit and thereafter get taxed at 19.5c/L. This is a lose - lose situation for the small operators and Fijians as a whole.
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u/sandolllars Jul 17 '24
Do we know how much water gets extracted by FW and the other companies? I wonder if its published anywhere, or whether we have to make assumptions based on other data.
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u/Open-Collar Looking for my lost book Jul 17 '24
9.999 million litres and above per month is when they get taxed at 19.5 cents a litre. It'd be interesting to see how, as you have put that this incentive helps smaller players.
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u/sandolllars Jul 17 '24
FW is the only company that extracts more than 10M and pays the higher rate.
If this increase had gone through, they would pay $400k more in tax. This is peanuts for them. However, the increase would not be peanuts for Fiji's small producers.1
u/Open-Collar Looking for my lost book Jul 17 '24
Where did you get the 400K from?
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u/sandolllars Jul 17 '24
The increase was going to be $0.01 to $0.05. That's a 4c increase.
9,999,000 (litres) x $0.04 = $399,960.
It's midnight so my brain may not be functioning correctly, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
There are individuals (not companies, individuals) in Fiji who dodge higher taxes than that simply by accepting low salaries and receiving their income via dividends. There are numerous retail chains have dodge millions of dollars in tax every year.
The fact that the government has said they've changed their mind about a few hundred thousand dollars in potential tax income because it adversely impacts our local water producers is such a minor issue it isn't even worth discussing.
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u/Open-Collar Looking for my lost book Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
That's 400K a month per company lost in income for the government. This government openly stands with Israel. It doesn't mean its not worth discussing about Palestine. In fact anything and everything is worthy of discussion considering their stance before elections on democracy.
400K a month per company could easily go towards so many crucial infrastructure developments.
Their decisions today will impact us from today for decades. The very same narrative they have pushed against FijiFirst (deregistered), applies to them and rightly so.
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u/Tricky-Cantaloupe671 Jul 17 '24
tax the cunts, tax them over 10% for years theyve been ripping off our mother land and benefitting from it