licensing fees, the Finance Minister Dr. David Saul has said that while he is always prepared to listen to people who complain about taxes, a realistic fee for boat licensing is long overdue. There is now a progressive fee determined by waterline length for taxing boats as opposed to the old $25 per boat fee.

As we see it, the old $25 per boat fee was only a temporary measure to get boats listed so that the tax could then be carried out.

There are people who feel aggrieved by the new system and there always will be people who feel put upon by new taxes. There are arguments that people with old boats or even "home-made'' boats pay the same fees per length as those with flashy new boats despite the fact that the value of the boat is nowhere near the same. There is some value in that argument as far as such things as insurance are concerned but we fail to see how there could be a differential in the tax. To create the differential would take such manpower as to defeat the revenue raising intent of the new fees.

Boat owners argue that boats are valuable recreation in a crowded Island and that other recreations are not taxed. We have some sympathy with that. It would be difficult to licence joggers or bicyclists on the roads however it might well be possible to tax spectator events such as sports and entertainment and it is not unheard of to tax radio and TV and it might be quite easy to tax cable TV. We don't think the public would like it, but it would be quite easy. The extreme would probably be a licence to swim. We are saying that any new tax will meet with opposition, at least when it is new.

Cars and motorised cycles are licensed according to their size and regardless of their age. Cars are a necessity for transportation although some do seem to be purely for jaunting about on recreation. They are highly licensed and heavily taxed, sometimes it seems simply because the taxation mechanism has been in place since Bermuda first had motorisation.

We can find far more justification for taxing recreational pleasure boats than we can for taxing cars which are used to get to work and to take children to school. That is especially so when Dr. Saul points out the cost of such things as Harbour Radio and the Marine Police.

Many of these boats are a pure luxury. Very few are useful as transport. It's a question, as usual, of paying for pleasure. As far as recreation is concerned, most of the people who own the boats could have just as much fun in a 14 footer as they can in a huge power boat.