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Senator Kurt Vialet, who serves as chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Finance, told the Consortium Tuesday that the government was collecting enough funds from various tax sources to continue meeting the critical obligation of government payroll.
Mr. Vialet said Gross Receipt Tax, corporate tax and individual income tax collection — though diminished following the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns that followed — was beginning to pickup and that the monies being received currently by the government was sufficient to meet the $19 million biweekly obligation.
"We're collecting sufficient funds to be able to meet that obligation," Mr. Vialet told the Consortium Tuesday evening. "Individual income tax, corporate income tax should begin to increase with the opening of the economy and gross receipts will definitely increase with the opening of bars and restaurants, because that's additional individuals that's going to be paying into the gross receipts."
And "if we were able to sustain these months with everything being closed then we should be a lot better off when we have the economy reopening," the senator said, comments that should place government employees at ease relative to job security.
Mr. Vialet also said he expects the high levels of unemployment — over 8,000 individuals, according to the Dept. of Labor — to decrease as the economy reopens.
The Bryan administration held the Spring Revenue Estimating Conference on Tuesday, but Mr. Vialet said there was no talk about the status of the $60 million loan the government is seeking from FirstBank and Banco Popular.
Another source of government income that will further stabilize the volatile situation is the Hotel Occupancy Tax. "What we haven't collected in a long time is the Excise Tax and Hotel Occupancy Tax. That has literally bottomed out, but we expect in June to begin to see some collections in the Hotel Occupancy Tax with the hotels and AirBnB reopening," the senator said.
