Business:: Tax Noose Choking Profits at JN

Jamaica National Group Chairman the venerable, yet invariably sharp-witted Oliver Clarke was not at all in good humour when calling for Government to remove the supremely onerous Special Asset Tax levied on financial institutions as part of the last National Debt Exchange - instituted under the then Government (now in Opposition) in order to -among other things - avoid default on its major obligations.

Speaking at the Group's Annual General Meeting ta Kingston's Pegasus hotel, "The Government gave a commitment to remove it (the tax) after three years. We are long past that time, and having gotten nothing from the NDX arrangement, we are now still being asked to carry this horrendous tax"

The regime changed, and the present Government hasn't yet seen fit to attend to the matter of the Special Asset Tax, a situation which the JN Chairman described as "untenable" and "patently wrong".
he added, "No foreign financial institution would EVER come into Jamaica and invest, knowing it would face that kind of tax burden."

he said between Corporate Income Tax at 25% , the Special Asset Tax along with other statutory charges would effectively wipe out the Group's earnings if the situation was allowed to continue, and told the full house the the Group would be enlisting their support to lobby the Government for its removal.

Mr Clarke also gave a quick update on the condition of JN CEO Earl Jarrett, who he said was "recovering very well" from a still unspecified illness about two months prior. Mr Jarrett, he advised, was presently in the eastern US city of Baltimore undergoing rehab.

Even with that expected noose, the Group overall turned a modest surplus of about J$1.5 billion, with assets, amounts in savings (for the Banking division) and overall revenues climbing

The company has its roots in Westmoreland in the 1870s, where the Clarke family formed the Westmoreland Building Society. A series of mergers led to the eventual creation of the Jamaica National Building Society which, in 2016, morphed into today's JN Bank and a Group of diversified financial service providers, including remittance/money services, insurance, debt collection and wealth management.