Employers fear a Government survey which now requires the names of employees along with their salary details is setting the stage for income tax.

Bermuda Employers? Council (BEC) president Eddie Saints said Government had yet to properly explain why the information was needed.

He said: ?My personal opinion is they are working out a tax model. Why do they need this information??

Mr. Saints said Government had spoken recently of balancing the economy between the haves and the have-nots but had not been specific on what this meant.

However, recently Premier Alex Scott denied Government was planning to bring in income tax but said it was interested in promoting social mobility.

Mr. Saints said a conversation with staff from the statisticians department about the new forms had led to him being told the department wanted a ?granular understanding of historical information of salaries?.

In the light of such vague information he said business would fear the worst.

He added: ?It would get more support without the names.?

The forms do not give salaries to the last cent but Mr. Saints said the banding, done in $6,000 per annum intervals for the first $156,000, is very narrow and leaves little to the imagination.

On Friday, Government chief statistician Valerie Robinson James denied firms had been refusing to return the forms.

She said: ?Far from there being a boycott, 43 percent of the businesses have returned the questionnaires.?

But Mr. Saints said firms were worried about breach of confidentiality, despite assurance from Government.

He said: ?The deadline was the 27th (of September). Forty three percent is by no means a measure of success, if the survey is mandatory and you are only getting 40 odd percent.?

He said two legal opinions had advised the BEC that the form should be filled in.

?We are not urging anyone to boycott this but a number of employers have taken another position, we are always there to lend support.?

Government have denied claims that the BEC had not been consulted about income requirements under the Employment Survey or that the department was not sensitive to their concerns.

Mrs. Robinson James said the department had conducted many information sessions with the business community to explain the requirements of the survey and to address their questions and concerns.

She said the merger of the CURE Annual Review of the Workforce Survey and the Employment Survey resulted from the concerns of the business community in having to complete two annual Government surveys that required similar information.

The primary objective was to alleviate the burden of survey response for those companies with ten of more employees who had been required to complete the CURE form.

Mr. Saints said business had backed the merging of the forms and have even suggested it but he said it was significant none of the employers groups remember being told that the salary details would be tied to names and job titles.

He questioned whether it had ever been mentioned or whether it had been slipped into to a welter of hard to digest information. However, Government said the employers had been given ample time to respond but none did until 5,000 surveys were sent out in August and it was far too late to retrieve them or change any the questions.

Mrs. Robinson James said that in addition to the meetings, the Department of Statistics hosted a series of lunch and learn sessions during early September for individual employers with ten or more employees, to explain the revised procedures, the need for income data and the reason for collecting employee-specific data.

The question on salaries had always been asked on the CURE survey, she said.

?Therefore, the change has not added any more work to employers. Instead it has eliminated the need for them to aggregate the information, a step required for the CURE Survey. The income bands used for the survey are the same income bands used for every survey and census the Department conducts.

?I am surprised that businesses would be shocked by the requirements,? said Mrs. Robinson James.

?We have taken all possible steps to explain and clarify the survey and given them every opportunity to raise concerns.?

Mrs. Robinson James added that the question of confidentiality and providing sensitive information has always been an issue for respondents to Government surveys.

However, she pointed out, the Employment Survey, and all other surveys conducted by the Department of Statistics, is conducted under the authority of the Statistics Act which safeguards against unauthorised disclosure of detailed individual information that may be collected.

Therefore, there are penalties for any unauthorised disclosure or use of the information collected under the Statistics Act.

?I would like to remind the business community that the Department of Statistics is mandated by Government to collect and provide accurate information on the economic and social activity in Bermuda.

?Hence, the use of job holder name for this survey is needed for data verification and quality assurance purposes only.

?While the CURE survey did not ask for the information by name, the Employment Survey needs this to reference potential sources of non-sampling error across all demographic variables.

?The objective is to ensure that the data sets published and used by businesses and the general public is reliable and consistent.?

However one employer said the job title part of the form, done in codes, could lead to some very misleading information being gathered as the the duties and responsibility levels of company secretaries or accounts clerks, for example, could vary enormously.