Jon Bond

Small Island, Big Ideas

  • 22–17, then 23–12: Guernsey voted for GST. Five weeks later it voted on spending

    22–17, then 23–12: Guernsey voted for GST. Five weeks later it voted on spending

    On 2 October, after six days of debate across two sittings and the best part of four years of argument, the States approved P&R’s Tax Reform 2026 package by 22 votes to 17, with one abstention. Guernsey will have a GST.

    Most of the coverage stopped there. I think the more telling result came five weeks later, on 6 November, when the same Assembly agreed its 2027 Budget. The GST package, as finally amended, only works if the spending side holds, and the first test of that has already been sat.

    What was actually decided

    Stripped of the amendment numbers, the package now looks like this:

    • GST at 3% from 2029, a year later than the June policy letter proposed, applied to supermarket food as well as everything else.
    • Tax cuts first. P&R intends the income tax and social security contribution reductions to land on 1 January 2029, with GST following later in the year, so households see the relief before the cost.
    • A hard commencement gate. GST cannot start until P&R and ESS publish a joint implementation assurance report confirming the mitigations and their legislation are actually in place (Amendment 52, Deputy Haley Camp, carried 33–4).
    • A narrow food carve-out. Food produced or grown by small independent suppliers will be zero-rated (Amendment 16, Deputy Marc Leadbeater, 28–11). The broader bid to exempt all food and non-alcoholic drinks (Amendment 7, Deputy Aidan Matthews) failed 15–24.
    • Technical design: zero-rating for self-build housing and second-hand goods, an International Service Entities regime modelled on Jersey’s, and a £280 de minimis on imported orders.
    • Transport taxes decoupled, so they can proceed even if other parts of the package fall (Amendment 30, Deputy Adrian Gabriel, 31–3).
    • An escalation path. GST rises to 4% 24 months after introduction and to 5% 24 months after that, with a fiscal rule capping it at 5% and an independent Fiscal Policy Panel review before each step (Amendment 55, Deputies Gavin St Pier and Sally Rochester).

    That last item is where the real story sits.

    The vote that matters is 20–19

    Amendment 55 carried 21–16, with three abstentions, on day two. But when the escalation came back as a standalone proposition at the final vote (Proposition 1A), it carried 20–19, with one ne vote pas. One vote.

    So the principle of GST passed with a five-vote cushion. The route from 3% to 5% passed with none.

    That matters because 3% is, in effect, the politically saleable entry rate, chosen, as Deputy de Sausmarez put it, to limit the inflationary hit. Once you net off the income tax and contribution cuts that accompany it, the package’s long-term revenue capacity sits mostly in the 4% and 5% steps. Those steps have the thinnest majority behind them and the most conditions in front of them.

    The people closest to the package aren’t hiding this. Treasury lead Charles Parkinson voted against the escalation and warned it would be seen as a “glide path” to higher rates. P&R President Lindsay de Sausmarez said afterwards that the rises are not guaranteed and that she was undecided until late in the debate.

    Then there’s the calendar. Tax cuts in January 2029, GST later that year, a general election in June 2029, the first step to 4% around 2031 and 5% around 2033. P&R’s confidence that the package will be irreversible before the election is about introduction. Every increase will be decided by Assemblies that haven’t been elected yet.

    The procedural cost

    It’s worth recording how the package got over the line. Across the September sitting, P&R’s supporters used Rule 26 guillotine motions to close off several amendments without debate, among them Deputy Liam McKenna’s referendum and outright-scrap amendments, Deputy Chris Blin’s insurance tax, Deputy Gabriel’s temporary 2% income tax rise, and three alternatives from Deputy David Goy. Some of those procedural votes were as tight as 21–18 and 21–17.

    The rules allow it, and with more than 50 amendments tabled across two sittings, the Assembly had a real time problem. But a tax that passes 22–17, over a petition of roughly 9,000 signatures, after alternatives were shut down unheard, carries a legitimacy cost. Expect the next Assembly to be invited to spend it.

    The savings gate

    The most important amendment you may not have heard of is Amendment 47 (Deputy Rob Curgenven, 21–13–6). It stops GST rising above its starting rate until a review has been completed and savings targets have been met, reported as committees delivering around £20m a year. Amendment 13 (Deputy Camp, 33–1) adds detailed reporting on savings and efficiencies.

    I think that’s sound design. It ties extra tax capacity to proof of spending discipline, which is exactly the bargain sceptical islanders were being asked to accept. But conditionality only means something if the condition is real.

    Five weeks later: the Budget

    P&R’s draft 2027 Budget offered two spending options:

    • Option A: hold committees to inflation minus 1%, the 1% real-terms cut the States had already resolved for each of 2027–2029. Result: a £4.2m surplus before investment returns.
    • Option B: an extra £15.7m, a 1.3% real-terms increase, taking committee net expenditure to £716.1m. Result: an £11.5m deficit before investment returns.

    Committees’ requests had overshot the agreed target by £33m. Option B carried 23–12. All five P&R members voted for it. Forward Guernsey, whose own amendment built the GST escalation path, backed Option A, then abstained on B after its “Option C” halfway house was rejected. The 1% annual real-terms cut has been replaced with a target to reduce spending by £20m by 2029.

    The Assembly also froze fuel duty and held alcohol duty to inflation, both against P&R’s advice, and raised the personal allowance to £15,850.

    There are two honest readings of this.

    The generous one: Option A was never deliverable. Committees were £33m over, and an honest budget beats a fictional cut. Deputy Parkinson’s argument was essentially that Option A wouldn’t produce efficiencies in an orderly, structured way. That’s a fair point, and I’d rather see a credible number than a heroic one.

    The less generous one: the spending restraint that helped persuade waverers to accept GST was relaxed at the first opportunity.

    Both are true. The structural problem is that the spending constraint has now been restated three times in a year, July’s inflation cap (passed 15–12), the 1% real-terms cut resolution, and now a £20m-by-2029 target, and each version is looser than the last. Meanwhile, the GST escalation is gated on savings. If the £20m doesn’t materialise, either GST stays at 3% and the funding gap persists, or a future Assembly waives the gate and the conditionality turns out to have been decorative. Neither outcome is good.

    The windfall problem

    The reason Option B looked affordable is Pillar Two. Estimated receipts for 2027 have been revised up to £79m. To P&R’s credit, the Budget sends anything above the revised estimates to rebuilding reserves rather than spending it, and the Scrutiny Management Committee has rightly warned that Pillar Two income is being recognised before the cash arrives.

    But this is the pattern I keep coming back to in the 2006–2024 numbers: volatile or one-off receipts flatter the headline and make real-terms spending growth look affordable. Pillar Two income is real, but it is not a structural fix. The deficit that justified GST, which Deputy Andy Sloan put at £77m in last year’s Budget debate, hasn’t gone away because a windfall arrived.

    What to watch

    • The draft GST legislation and when “2029” turns into an actual date.
    • The joint P&R/ESS implementation assurance report, the first hard gate.
    • Savings reporting under Amendment 13, whether the £20m is tracked transparently, committee by committee, or quietly netted against growth.
    • The 2028 Budget, whether Option B becomes the habit.
    • June 2029, introduction lands within months of the election, and the escalation belongs to whoever is elected.

    The bottom line

    Guernsey has made the revenue decision it ducked in 2023. That matters, and P&R deserves credit for getting it over the line. But GST was never the whole answer to the structural deficit. It was half of a bargain, and the other half was spending discipline.

    On 2 October the States signed the revenue side. On the evidence of 6 November, it hasn’t yet signed the other.

    Jon Bond is Founder and CEO of Evans Bond Limited, an accountancy and advisory practice in Guernsey, and principal of Melius Consulting Limited – a business consultancy. He is also a non-executive chairman of CI Co-op and Sark Shipping. The views expressed here are his own.

    Sources

    • States of Deliberation electronic voting record, P.2026/49 Tax Reform 2026 (Billet d’État XII), 30 September–2 October 2026
    • States of Guernsey, 2026 Tax Reform Package — consumption tax page: https://www.gov.gg/taxpackage
    • Guernsey Press, “GST is agreed at 3% but soon rising to 5%”, 2 October 2026: https://guernseypress.com/news/2026/10/02/gst-is-agreed-at-3percent-but-soon-rising-to-5percent
    • Bailiwick Express, “5% GST, no tax-free food… and axing alternatives”: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news-ge/5-gst-no-tax-free-food-and-axing-alternatives-how-day-2-of-the-tax-debate-played-out/
    • Bailiwick Express, “Feeling 22? Narrow victory for P&R”: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news-ge/feeling-22-narrow-victory-for-pr-as-guernsey-goes-for-3-gst-package/
    • Bailiwick Express, “GUILLOTINE: P&R sends tax alternatives to the chopping block”: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news-ge/guillotine-pr-sends-tax-alternatives-to-the-chopping-block-before-allowing-democratic-debate/
    • Guernsey Press, “Spending to rise as States backs ‘Option B’ 2027 Budget”, 6 November 2026: https://guernseypress.com/news/2026/11/06/spending-to-rise-as-states-backs-option-b-2027-budget
    • Guernsey Press, “2027 Budget – what it means for you”, 7 November 2026: https://guernseypress.com/news/2026/11/07/budget-what-it-means
    • Bailiwick Express, “Flip-flopping heck!”: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news/flip-flopping-heck-which-deputies-argued-for-savings-then-voted-for-an-extra-15-7m/
    • The Quarry, “Budget reveals £79m tax windfall”: https://www.thequarry.media/budget-reveals-79m-tax-windfall-with-states-given-option-to-relax-spending-control/
    • The Quarry, “Scrutiny committee demands Budget transparency”: https://www.thequarry.media/scrutiny-committee-demands-budget-transparency-ahead-of-2027-debate/

  • The GST Debate Goes to Half-Time: What Three Days in July Actually Settled

    The GST Debate Goes to Half-Time: What Three Days in July Actually Settled

    Guernsey’s biggest tax decision in a generation is now on a summer break. After three days of debate on 15–17 July, the States ran out of road before reaching a final vote on Policy & Resources’ tax reform package — the 3% GST, the accompanying income tax and social security changes, and the corporate tax extensions attached to it. Deputies will pick it back up on 30 September.

    That pause is worth reflecting on. Nothing has been decided, but a lot has already happened, and the shape of what’s left to debate has changed in ways that matter more than the headline “no vote yet” suggests.

    What was actually on the table

    P&R’s package, published in June, centres on a 3% GST alongside higher income tax allowances, a reformed lower income tax band, and modest extensions to corporate tax — including bringing the 10% rate to cover the full profits of regulated businesses. Taken together, the committee says the package raises about £42m a year gross, or roughly £39.5m net once running costs are stripped out. That is the number to hold onto, because most of what follows is a fight over how that £39.5m gets found and who carries it.

    The kill shots that didn’t land

    Three attempts to stop the package outright were all defeated in the first two days:

    • A sursis from Deputy Liam McKenna and Deputy Mark Helyar to delay the whole debate, pending a new States Treasurer’s advice and a clear-out of the Revenue Service’s backlog, fell narrowly, 17 votes to 22.
    • An amendment to drop GST from the package entirely (McKenna) was defeated more heavily, roughly 28 votes to 10.
    • A call for a binding referendum on GST (McKenna and Simon Vermeulen) was rejected 25 votes to 14.
    • A separate bid to scrap the package for a new Appropriations Committee tasked with finding savings first (Garry Collins and Haley Camp) lost 29 votes to 11.

    P&R came out of those votes able to say, fairly, that its core proposition is intact. Treasury lead Charles Parkinson told the Press he believed there was “clearly a majority in favour” of the package; P&R President Lindsay de Sausmarez was more circumspect but agreed the numbers looked to be there. Neither claim has been tested – the substantive vote hasn’t happened, but the pattern of the July votes doesn’t contradict it.

    What did land

    Three amendments were carried, and each of them changes what P&R will actually be implementing if the package eventually passes:

    1. A Child Responsibility Tax Allowance (Andy Sloan and Munazza Malik) – a direction to P&R to introduce a new income tax allowance for each dependent child. This wasn’t a request for a report; it was an instruction. Gavin St Pier made the sharper point in debate: this is a directive, not a study, and the most likely funding source for it is more revenue – quite possibly more GST.
    2. An instruction to investigate a flat tax rate as an alternative structure.
    3. A three-year cap on growth in total States expenditure, including social security spending, to inflation (Sloan, moved by Helyar in his absence), which passed by the narrowest margin of the sitting, 15 votes to 12.

    The spending cap is the one worth watching. It was framed as a discipline measure, but its scope, explicit inclusion of social security spending, not just departmental budgets, has already drawn a public warning from the Committee for Health & Social Care that it risks real-terms cuts to services, and Bailiwick Express has since run a fact-check on the more alarmist claims doing the rounds about pensions being at risk (their verdict: the amendment doesn’t force pension cuts, but it does tie ESS’s hands in a way that could force difficult trade-offs). This is exactly the kind of measure that sounds costless in a sound bite and isn’t: capping headline spending growth to inflation while service demand, health and care in particular, runs ahead of inflation is a structural squeeze, not a saving.

    There’s a genuine tension buried in July’s results that P&R will have to reconcile before September: deputies voted, in the same sitting, to add a new tax allowance (a cost) and to cap spending growth (a constraint on where new costs get absorbed). Both carried. Neither amendment’s proposers were required to reconcile them with each other, and it’s not obvious P&R’s £39.5m net figure survives both being implemented as instructed.

    The procedural oddity

    Under the Assembly’s normal rules, adjourned debates don’t reopen for new amendments. Officials have indicated they’ll take a different view here, effectively reopening the amendment window until 22 September – which all but guarantees the 22 amendments considered in July will be added to before the Assembly reconvenes. Deputies campaigning against GST, including Garry Collins, have already signalled they’re preparing further amendments over the recess.

    Reading the numbers

    The vote margins across July tell a story in themselves. The sursis and the flat “no GST” amendment both lost by comfortable double-digit margins – this is not an Assembly on the verge of rejecting reform outright, in the way it did in 2023. But the spending cap amendment passing 15–12 is a different kind of signal: on a genuinely contested, ideologically loaded question about the size and shape of government, the numbers are close enough that a handful of switched votes moves outcomes. If the substantive GST vote in September comes down to a margin like that, this is not settled business, whatever the confidence from Treasury and P&R leadership suggests.

    What to watch for in September

    • Whether P&R chooses to adjust its own package before the debate resumes, as de Sausmarez has hinted is possible, rather than defend it unamended against a fresh round of amendments.
    • How P&R proposes to reconcile the child tax allowance and the spending cap, both now carried, both pulling in opposite directions on the same £39.5m.
    • Whether the reopened amendment window produces anything that changes the arithmetic, rather than simply adding volume to an already long list.
    • The roughly ten to eleven amendments left over from July that still haven’t been debated at all.

    None of this changes the structural point that’s been the throughline of this year’s tax debate: Guernsey has a funding gap that isn’t going away, reserves that are being run down to cover it, and a package on the table that raises real revenue but does so by reshaping who pays and how. Three days in July didn’t answer whether the States will accept that reshaping. It mostly confirmed that the fight over the details, allowances, caps, who bears the transition, may end up mattering as much as the headline GST number itself.

    Sources: Guernsey Parliament (parliament.gg), States Meeting 15 July 2026, Billet d’État XII; Guernsey Press, 15–22 July 2026 and 17 August 2026; Bailiwick Express, July 2026; States of Guernsey, “2026 Tax Reform Package published.”

    Jon Bond is Founder and CEO of Evans Bond Limited, an accountancy and advisory practice in Guernsey, and principal of Melius Consulting Limited – a business consultancy. He is also a non-executive chairman of CI Co-op and Sark Shipping. The views expressed here are his own.

  • GST – The Big Debate

    GST – The Big Debate

    Deputies will spend part of this sitting debating the Policy & Resources Committee’s Tax Reform 2026 package – the outcome of the Tax Review Sub-Committee’s work on making the Bailiwick’s finances more sustainable.

    It’s rarely a single up-or-down vote on something this size: one member has proposed shelving it entirely (a “Sursis”), and 22 separate amendments have been laid, ranging from small technical exemptions to wholesale replacements of the entire package.

    This post summarises the core proposal and every amendment that’s been laid, and gives you a searchable table to explore them.

    The Main Proposal

    Brought by the Policy & Resources Committee, the proposition asks the States to agree, having considered the Policy Letter “Tax Reform 2026” dated 8 June 2026:

    • To direct the Committee to implement the package of tax reforms set out in sections 9 and 10 of the Policy Letter, covering income tax, social security contributions, a goods and services tax (GST) and other measures, with rates and thresholds as set out in Appendix 7.
    • To add the Tax Reform Programme to the Major Projects Portfolio and delegate authority to Policy & Resources to approve up to £10.6m of implementation funding from the General Revenue Reserve, subject to business cases.
    • To direct Policy & Resources to return to the States with an assurance review in 2030 (section 12).
    • To direct preparation of the legislation necessary to give effect to the above.
    Ref ↕ Category ↕ What it does ↕ Proposers ↕