For those not familiar with the way this works, what Digicel & LIME have done is said…you pay me $X per month for access to the internet. Then they go to the services that you use most - YouTube, WhatsApp, Skype, Viber, Facebook, Netflix and any other popular services - and begin charging them for YOU to be able to access their site/service in a reliable way. If those services don’t pay them, you - as a consumer - have wasted your money. In other words, they “double dip” - by getting paid on both ends.
This creates a two-tiered internet, where the companies with the most money get the “fast lane” and the smaller upstarts that don’t have a large warchest of cash get the “slow lane”. Let us bring this discussion home to discuss relevant examples. As a co-founder of 10 Pound Pledge - where our customers pay us for an in-home workout & nutrition guide where they can lose 10 pounds in 5 weeks - if our customer base continues to grow at the rate it has been since the launch a few weeks ago, within a short period of time there will be a non-trivial amount of Digicel & LIME subscribers potentially streaming our videos on their phones, tablets or computers. This action by Digicel & LIME today is a warning that they will come to us - a small technology & fitness startup built in Jamaica by Jamaicans - and start to demand payment. If we don’t pay them, then our customers get a bad streaming experience? That prospect is quite frightening and gives us pause.
We are not alone. This could happen to any of our friends across the local technology landscape. A good friend of mine, Gordon Swaby the founder of EduFocal, also has been doing a tremendous job growing usage on EduFocal and will eventually be getting into video. Imagine when students from all across Jamaica are improving their test scores & academic performance by learning through EduFocal on their Digicel & LIME devices and Digicel & LIME turn to Gordon and ask him for payment.
This policy is in effect anti-growth. As you succeed, you get taxed by these large telecoms. That has the potential to be innovation & growth killing.
10 Pound Pledge & EduFocal are just two obvious examples. The same could be said for AgroCentral - run by my friend Jermaine Henry - the up and coming clearing house for prices of fresh produce. In my humble opinion, this has the potential to change how we buy fresh produce in Jamaica. Yet…they are just getting started and should they become as successful as we all want them to, they now have to worry about being taxed by two of the largest telecom providers in Jamaica?
Slippery Slope & Future Implications
This is a very slippery slope and what is to stop these telecoms from going even further. If they get away with this, then what happens if they decide to launch a music service. Immediately, all music streaming services and radio stations - Zip 103, FameFM, Fyah 105, Jamaicans Music, iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud and any future aspiring music tech entrepreneur to name just a few - have to start making a payment to the telcos. Think this is far-fetched? I am sure I am not the only one that has been getting SMS messages from Digicel about Loop - the recently launched news company that they seem to be pushing. Will OGNR, The Gleaner, The Observer and others have to start paying Digicel to get “fast lane access” too?
This is a familiar struggle that many countries seem to be dealing with. It seems that many telecoms and media companies can’t resist the urge to double dip. The OUR did a wonderful job introducing competition into the telecoms industry by granting the licenses to the telecoms over the last few decades. It is important for the growth of our economy - to preserve consumer choice and not deter much needed innovation - that they not allow these innovation killing, consumer restricting policies to take hold.
We sympathize with the plight of the telecom companies with WhatsApp recently announcing that they will be rolling out voice call features, and the impact that may have on their voice revenue - but using a sledgehammer to block all VOIP traffic and selectively giving the highest bidders the fastest lanes on the network can’t possibly be the solution.
Today it is VOIP from some services. What is the next stop? Where does it end?
It needs to stop right now. End right here.
]]>I respect their opinions and their intellect, but I would just like to address the elephant in the room. When all is said and done, the responsibility for this bank tax lies with us. The people. The silent majority. To be clear, I hate the idea of piecemeal tax implementation and would much rather the government implement wholesale tax reform. But, as Deika Morrison replied to me and said…it is not likely that any government will actually do this.
Now…don’t get me wrong. I actually agree with Dr. King’s assertion that given the current state of our fiscal house, the bank tax has many benefits. That is, the core problem the government currently faces is that of raising revenue. Many people avoid & evade taxes. So while they can escape the reach of the tax collection agency, they can’t escape things that they have to use on a regular basis - like banking transactions, phone credit, buying gas, etc. So it makes sense to tax those things, because in an ‘elegant’ way it broadens the tax base and costs little the gov’t. All they do is collect bigger checks from the same companies. From an economic & practical point of view…it’s perfect.
As unpleasant as this may be, because those that have been tax compliant do have to bear the burden for those that are not, we are all equally as culpable for the current state of affairs.
Not just those that pay bribes and do blatantly illicit activities, but everybody else that knows that these activities take place and say nothing. You know your neighbor is stealing light/water, yet don’t report them to JPS/NWC. You know that the ‘ridiculously cheap’ phone cases that you are buying from a “reliable” client were imported and escaped duty, yet you just look the other way. You know you shouldn’t speed or drive like a madman, but when you do you “beg a bligh” or “buy the officer a Guinness”. You knew that earning 25% interest from a government bond must have been too good to be true, but the returns were too great. You knew that those generous Air Jamaica ‘buddy passes’ were too sweet to give up, asking a “doctor friend” to write up a prescription for your friend in your name so you can use your gov’t issued health insurance to help them, and when someone was buying goods/services from your company and asked for the “No Receipt” discount in exchange for the business, were all wrong but you went ahead with them either way.
Now please don’t misunderstand me…I am not condemning/judging anyone in particular or pointing fingers. God knows there are times when I have looked the other way, knowing full well that I am benefitting from the State’s demise. But we would all do well to be conscious of the fact that as much as our policymakers have made bad decisions and been corrupt over the years, we are equally culpable because there is no way they are corrupt in 100% secrecy. Someone knows, quite often many people know. No one says anything. Very few hold anyone accountable. It is because everyone knows that they won’t be held accountable why it is perpetuated. Everyone knows, so no one knows.
It is also easy to point fingers at the “corrupt” politicians - when it is the bias inherent in our society towards corruption and “bun informer” mentality that has gotten us into this mess. If we all start rejecting those small infractions, start rebuking people when they litter, reporting known acts of rule-breaking, unethical or corrupt behavior, and generally just put pressure on everybody to behave better and start looking after our country that things will get better.
You can’t expect to be able to stay silent, not put yourself at risk, but have the State operate flawlessly and make only long-term best interest decisions on behalf of your kids.
So before you complain about the bank tax, and any other tax that will have to be imposed on us due to the endemic “revenue leakage” - please keep in mind that as innocent and angellic as you think you are, you are equally to blame for this current predicament as are the politicians.
Oh…and to those politicians, or families and friends of politicians, that claim “disbelief” that people could be so troubled over “just $1” - if it were just $1 the gov’t wouldn’t implement it. It’s not just $1, which is why they have imposed it. They have a large hole to fill and “just $1” won’t fill it. So stop being disingenuous.
For everybody else, you no longer have the luxury of feigning ignorance of your own culpability.
]]>We will be doing a lot of traditional PR, but I feel like this would be a wikid opportunity for the Caribbean new media scene to support one of their own.
To let me know you are interested, email me at marc.gayle+launch@gmail.com.
In terms of help, I would love at least 1 article from anyone that runs a blog - with a link to the product page when it launches.
I can get you content or an angle to write up, customized for your audience (if you know what your audience is).
The first easy step you can do for me is to retweet this tweet.
Not only do I need your actual blogging help, but if you can pass along this message to anyone else you know that has a blog, tweets, IGs, anything to do with New/Social Media.
We will have lots of stuff to retweet, post on IG, content for blogs of all types, the whole nine yards. So if you have a blog, a twitter account, an IG account, FB or any other type of “Social Media” account and are interested in helping with the launch, please get in touch at marc.gayle+launch@gmail.com.
I am trying to pull off a Tim Ferris - 4 Hour Workweek Book launch - where there was so much groundswell from new media that traditional media couldn’t ignore him.
Look forward to any (and all assistance) I can get from you guys.
P.S. This will be a digital fitness product that anyone with a credit card from anywhere can buy - we are going after the “New Years Resolutions” storyline and “losing weight in the New Year”, etc.
]]>With the many successful listings we have seen to date, it can be deemed a roaring success.
The issue now is that in this current economic environment, one of the pre-requisites for successfully completing the IMF deal is an Omnibus Tax Incentive Bill, which in the current form will in effect eliminate the tax holiday that junior stock exchange firms enjoy for the first 10 years after they have listed (5 years of no tax, 5 years of half tax).
As can be expected, there has been push back.
The problem is that policymakers and bureacrats can’t be trusted to manage the fiscal affairs of this country properly. Every Tom, Dick and Harry will want a waiver - and there is no sign that they have enough backbone to say no. So, the solution that the IMF is insisting is a flat tax rate across the board, and no incentives, no waivers, no exceptions.
So let us examine the rationality behind why it makes sense for firms that are currently enjoying the tax breaks to give it up.
We have to make a few assumptions:
For the 10-year period after the incentives expire, their Total Tax Bill will be roughly: $584M JMD.
For the 10-year period after the incentives would have expired, their Total Tax Bill will be roughly: $350.44M JMD.
For a total tax savings of: $233.68M JMD.
The beautiful thing about the latter scenario is this tax rate should (in theory) stay that rate forever - so the longer it stays that low is the more the benefits compound over the long term. If you assume the average life of a listed company in Jamaica - Life of Jamaica, Broilers, etc. - the tax savings over the long term, in aggregate, will likely be huge (assuming that future governments can resist the urge to raise the rate).
Another good thing that removing the tax incentive does is that it will encourage the JJSE listed firms to reinvest all/most of their profits back into the company - rather than taking it out and paying taxes on it. That will likely increase their growth rate, and increase the tax savings when they eventually start to declare a profit and pay taxes on that profit.
I have done up a basic spreadsheet with these scenarios that you can play with.
So in reality, by removing the tax incentive - and encouraging growing companies to keep reinvesting in growth that is actually a better outcome for the long-term health of the economy, and for the shareholders of the company as these numbers show. A lower tax rate is also beneficial to smaller companies before they get to the JJSE stage, so it increases the likelihood that there will be more listings.
Naturally a lot of the benefits depend on the final corporate tax rate. If it is even lower than 15%, say 12.5% then the case looks even more compelling.
It also depends on the self-restraint of future policymakers to not try and raise the low rate and eradicate all the gains.
Depending on how the bill is written - and implemented, it has the potential be a win-win for all involved including those currently paying 0% corporate tax rate.
Thanks to Gordon Swaby for inspiring this post with a FB post today, and for proof-reading it.
]]>gh-pages
. That is just regular HTML/CSS/JS. It works perfectly.
But, I wanted to add an elegant Octopress blog to that same static site - so I can have both my company site & blog hosted on Github’s powerful hosting platform.
This is how I pulled it off.
_config.yml
(you can customize all the other settings, but these worked for me)
url: http://5kmvp.com
subscribe_rss: /atom.xml
root: /
permalink: /blog/:year/:month/:day/:title/
source: source
destination: public
category_dir: blog/categories
Rakefile
public_dir = "public" # compiled site directory
source_dir = "source" # source file directory
blog_index_dir = 'source/blog' # directory for your blog's index page (if you put your index in source/blog/index.html, set this to 'source/blog')
Then once that is done, you copy your existing static site (with the exact structure that you setup earlier) into your /octopress/source/
folder - so yours should look similar to mine here.
What you will notice is that now Octopress will publish to /blog (which is a subfolder called ‘blog’ in your ‘source’ folder).
Basically the way Octopress works is that at it’s core, it copies everything from /source/ except for a few exceptions (all folders that start with _
, etc.)
If you have any conflicts with your folders (e.g. if you have /img/ and Octopress has /images/) then just copy both if you don’t want have to update your paths in all your HTML files. It’s no big deal.
That’s pretty much it.
Remember that rake preview
and rake generate
are your friends. Use them religiously.
If you have any issues with styling, then you may need to play around with some of the paths in the various variables in your _config.yml
and Rakefile
a bit. But you should’t have to, because all of these values worked for me - and I did A LOT of playing around.
Special Note: You should end up with your static site index.html in the root folder of the generated site - you can see the source here and the generated version here - and you should also have an octopress generated index in the /blog/
subfolder - again…the source here and generated version here.
You can always just look at my entire source to see what I did.
Most other setup & deployment instructions apply and work fine (including remembering to include a CNAME file for your custom domain).
Whenever you want to change one of the static sites - i.e. a non-octopress file - then edit/update it locally and use rake deploy
when you are done (as opposed to a git push
like you would for a normal non-static site hosted on gh-pages
).
Remember to backup your entire repo to a source
or master
branch or some other branch, so you can always revert to it if you mess stuff up.
Good luck and I hope this saves some poor soul from spending weeks trying to figure this out.
]]>could not connect to server: Connection refused Is the server running on host "127.0.0.1" and accepting TCP/IP connections on port xxxx?
Running: rake assets:precompile rake aborted! Invalid CSS after "...: alpha(opacity": expected comma, was ":0);" (in /tmp/build_1lypjy898u7o0/app/assets/stylesheets/application.css.scss) (sass):3665
I am not a fish/Because I am not afraid of the gully-side.
Range of Maturities
Commercial Paper is generally offered from 1 to 270 days.
Minimum Investment Amount
The minimum is $100,000 for transactions with a term of seven days or more. For transactions with a term of one to six days, the minimum amount is $500,000.
So many tabs that I can’t even see the name. It’s not long before I I can’t even see the favicons.
]]>