{"id":732,"date":"2020-05-01T12:23:38","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T17:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/?p=732"},"modified":"2022-10-04T06:38:19","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T11:38:19","slug":"battered-in-april-car-dealers-looking-for-tax-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/battered-in-april-car-dealers-looking-for-tax-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Battered In April, Car Dealers Looking For Tax Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

AS THE<\/span>\u00a0coronavirus pandemic batters commerce, auto dealers for both new and pre-owned vehicles are calling for tax breaks on import duties.<\/p>\n

The calls come as customer traffic has all but disappeared from showrooms, according to the dealers, who say sales are down 70-80 per cent.<\/p>\n

The head of listed dealership dealer Jetcon Corporation, Andrew Jackson, says April is a month he wants to forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrible is the one word I\u2019d use. Sales are down about 80 per cent. New orders are down and cancellations, while I don\u2019t have the numbers yet, are way up,\u201d Jackson told the\u00a0Financial Gleaner<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen things are tight, people shy away from the big-ticket items and that figure of 80 per cent, I believe, is worldwide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He is supported by Lynvalle Hamilton, president of the Jamaica Used Car Dealers Association, JUCDA, who says his own dealership, Auto Channel, has seen a \u00adsimilar fallout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very frightening to see what is \u00adhappening; who would have thought it would have looked like this. We are down about 70 per cent. April was not a good month. It is only in the last week that we\u2019ve see a little uptick,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n

The situation was no different at new car dealer Stewart\u2019s Automotive Group, which carries brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, Jaguar, Mitsubishi and Suzuki.<\/p>\n

CEO Duncan Stewart says business was good for the first three months of 2020, but then came April and with it little to no showroom traffic amid lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually non-existent because of the environment we\u2019re in now. Sales themselves have precipitously fallen. March wasn\u2019t a bad month, but April certainly will be,\u201d said Stewart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe service business is being affected by the opening hours as well as the St Catherine lockdown. Notwithstanding that, we have a fair amount of service and parts business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stewart is pitching duty relief as a stimulus for the economy and a win-win, saying cheaper cars would generate more sales, and more sales, in turn, would lead to more landside tax collections, offsetting the concessions made on the port taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe simplest way is to stimulate the tax revenues of the Government and the sales of cars by reducing import duties on cars that are already in Jamaica. The desired thing is for them to do it permanently, but we\u2019ve already shown the positive correlation between lower import taxes, our sales and, by extension, government revenue,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

JUCDA President Hamilton says his \u00adassociation wrote to Finance Minister Nigel Clarke last Friday, April 24, requesting short-term relief on one \u00adparticular port tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made a \u00adrequest of Minister Clarke that the extra five per cent in GCT that used car dealers have to pay on the wharves, that Government should forego that surcharge for about six months. This would give us some breathing room. That would encourage a lot of dealers to clear the cars that they have on the wharves, thus \u00adhanding over \u00adrevenue to the Government,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n

The GCT on imports collected at the ports amounts to about $8 billion on average, per month. How much of that is paid by auto importers was not ascertained.<\/p>\n

JUCDA is also asking the Government to \u00adextend the one-year period for payment for vehicles that have expired their stay at the bonded facility at Tinson Pen by at least three months.<\/p>\n

As they await feedback, auto dealers have been shedding costs, a process that Jetcon\u2019s Jackson notes includes tough conversations with staff about job security and concessions at a time when everyone is vulnerable and scared.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey understand; but the more \u00adsignificant thing is that they are nervous. They are fearful, both of the disease as well as the financial problems,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

May, he said, will be a crucial month in which more costs will be shaved.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we\u2019re not going to be able to avoid lay-offs, but for the meantime we\u2019ve cut some benefits and done all-round cost-saving measures,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

At the Stewart\u2019s Group, Stewart opted out of \u201cgiving the painful details\u201d of measures taken by the family-run company, which, he said, were inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve engaged our staff in a spirit of searching for solutions,\u201d said the auto dealer. \u201cWhile I will not say the form or the extent of some of the \u00admeasures we\u2019ve taken, I can say that in all my 25 years in business, I never dreamt that it would come to this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Over at Tank-Weld Machinery and Equipment, dealers for Shacman trucks, CEO John Ralston is having a different experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re happy with what\u2019s going on. We\u2019re seeing the norm; nothing strange has come before us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It normally takes four months from the placing of orders to delivery of the trucks, but Ralston says customers are choosing instead to buy what\u2019s on the company\u2019s lot, rather than wait for units to be shipped from China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what they are saying is that this crisis must be over at some time, and they will be left\u00ad \u00adbehind if they don\u2019t continue to retool and modernise their fleet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AS THE\u00a0coronavirus pandemic batters commerce, auto dealers for both new and pre-owned vehicles are calling for tax breaks on import duties. The calls come as customer traffic has all but disappeared from showrooms, according to the dealers, who say sales are down 70-80 per cent. The head of listed dealership dealer Jetcon Corporation, Andrew Jackson, …<\/p>\n

Battered In April, Car Dealers Looking For Tax Relief<\/span> Read More \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamaicasme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}