Allow Personal Income Tax Payers A Discretionary Component Of Our Tax

MPs have a discretionary component of their DSIP Funds. Why don't the PIT payers also be allowed a discretionary component of our tax to be paid directly to a project in our districts or LLGs that we want to support directly?

“Many Papua New Guineans support our aged parents, infant school relatives, widowed parents, and divorced sisters without ever asking for financial support from the Government, the Church, private enterprises or charity organisations. We do this because tradition dictates it. Income tax laws hardly help Papua New Guineans because they are devised for the foreign nuclear family. Often a Papua New Guinean will support ten or more close relatives besides his own immediate family of five or more, and yet our income tax laws only entitle a taxpayer to claim three dependents. The State does not seem to realise that the relatives and wantoks that l, as a taxpayer, support are the same people the State has been established to serve. These legal limitations upon income tax claims disregard my personal support and contributions to my fellow citizens who also happen to be my relatives.“_Late Bernard Narokobi’s view on tax.

My view is that application of PIT should be the tax payer's discretion.

Let us assume that currently 10% of the PNG population is employed and paying personal income tax to support provision of government services to the 80% of the population.

Conservatively projected from the 2000 census the combined population of the Sepik region is estimated at 550,000 (ESP 350,000 + WSP 200,000). This is about 7% of the PNG population of about 7 million people.

If a tax payer is allowed Personal Income Tax discretion of 10% to be paid to a province of our choosing than that would be around K172,710,000.00 available for disbursements.

If 55,000 Sepiks are working in the Sepik region (excluding expat Sepiks working outside the Sepik region) that would be about 7.8% of the working PNG population of 700,000. If the Personal Income Tax discretion is to be distributed by proportions of working population than the Sepik region can expect to get K13,570,071.00

As a government the ESPG should push for policies on PIT to raise internal revenue locally and not always relying on National Government budget to draw down from to implement their policies.

Should the people who pay personal income tax get to decide where our taxes should be deducted to?

For example I think I should get to decide about my taxes going straight into either of the two Sepik Region provinces' or my district's coffers (disregarding where in the country we work).

My reason is that if the Sepik region can see a direct link to how much revenue it can generate from producing and exporting Human Resource than maybe it will start to seriously invest in education (tertiary scholarships and etc) and know with certainty that the province or district will get its ROI in terms of tax. For example, if we have a school in the village that we want to support than we can arrange to have our taxes paid directly into the running of such schools.