A total of 570,000 people earning less than $3 million per annum are set to benefit from a reverse tax credit of $20,000.
This was announced on Tuesday by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke, as he opened the 2024/25 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.
“The reverse tax credit means that every registered taxpayer who, in a completed fiscal year, did their part in contributing to society, whether through PAYE (Pay As You Earn) or being self-employed and who earn under that threshold, this government will provide them a reverse tax credit of $20,000,” Clarke said to sustained applause from the government benches.
Clarke said there are 570,000 Jamaicans who contribute to the society through statutory deductions and some through personal income tax who will benefit from this measure.
“The cost of this programme is $11.4 billion, and we (the government) consider this money well spent,” he said.
The finance minister noted that reverse tax credits exist in other countries but was being implemented for the first time in Jamaica. He said there will be an established system for the processing and payment of the tax credit that will be managed by Tax Administration Jamaica.
Clarke said that it will take some time to set up before it is ready, “because we want to set it up in a way that is durable so that the mechanism can be potentially available again in the future”.
Clarke said this was the Administration’s way of “leveraging the macro-economic stability to the people’s benefit”.
