Saipan Chamber of Commerce officials have expressed their opposition to the government\u2019s proposal to reduce tax rebates, warning that it would cripple the local economy.<\/p>\n
SCC president Charles V. Cepeda said that \u201cany changes to the rebate structure will cripple our [already] ailing economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we want to really kill the economy?\u201d asked Cepeda, noting that there may not even be enough revenue from the rebate tax if investors start leaving the island.<\/p>\n
He also noted that giving the rebate funds to the Public School System and Northern Marianas College as proposed by House Bill 15-51 would not be sufficient. <\/p>\n
He said these two agencies are already struggling with limited budgets.<\/p>\n
He expressed concerns that new constructions would only prove useless if no fund is available to operate them.<\/p>\n
Vice Speaker Justo Quitugua, who is the author of House Bill 15-51, aims to allocate $500,000 plus 10 percent rebate reduction revenue for the infrastructure needs of NMC and PSS.<\/p>\n
Chamber vice president Alex Sablan recommended that the Chamber \u201cnot support the bill as there is no plan for maintenance beyond the building of facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sablan likewise said that the rebate program should be kept \u201cas it remains one of the major incentives for investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the existing law, taxpayers get a rebate of up to 85 percent at the end of each tax year.<\/p>\n
The release of tax rebates and refunds has been delayed in recent years due to the lack of reserve funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Chamber of Commerce officials have expressed their opposition to the government\u2019s proposal to reduce tax rebates, warning that it would cripple the local economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}