Bill for consultant work on tax review revealed

Wednesday 29 March 2023

Policy & Resources spent more than £370,000 on consultants in its ultimately futile attempts to bring in a GST and other reforms.

The senior committee’s tax review took place in two stages as it looked at ways to make changes that would close a looming £100million blackhole in States finances.

Deputies ultimately rejected any major proposals that resulted from the work.

A Freedom of Information request has confirmed some of the costs of P&R’s project, although its own staff time has not been accounted for.

Consultancy costs were £125,000 in the first phase and £247,911 in the second.

This consisted of a  “detailed economic assessment of various income and consumption tax options,” for the first phase, which was supported by inhouse modelling of potential tax structures.

Consultancy costs for the second phase included a ”detailed review of the options for corporate tax reform and business analysis to establish the potential operational costs of potential tax reforms".

In addition to that spending was £48,452 on communication and engagement.

“Communication and engagement costs include the hosting of twelve public events and livestreams in Guernsey and Alderney and the creation and distribution of supporting materials.”

It also covers paying for someone to create a new website, ourfuture.gg, which also hosts other material on the government work plan, public service reform, education and health transformation.

“We are not able to provide a breakdown of officer time associated with this project as officers will have been working on multiple workstreams over the course of this project and it is not possible to disaggregate the time spent on specific tasks,” P&R said in its response.