The Government should consider hitting businesses with a corporate tax to help Bermuda escape the OECD spotlight, a PLP activist said yesterday.

And Rolfe Commissiong also called for progressive income tax so the rich and the poor would more evenly share the burden of filling the Government's coffers.

He was responding to former Insurance Advisory Committee chairman Brian Hall's recent praise of the new Government's initial dealings with the international business sector.

In Mr. Hall's speech to a conference of world insurance leaders earlier this week he predicted the Government's forthcoming tax shake-up would be business-friendly -- in that it would encourage rather than stifle growth.

And he said it was unlikely income tax would be introduced because of Bermuda's relatively small size.

He said the new Government was putting emphasis on helping Bermudians benefit from the big business sector "not by robbing the rich in favour of the poor'' but by helping them participate.

Yesterday Finance Minister Eugene Cox sided with business leader Mr. Hall rather than his fellow paid-up PLP member Mr. Commissiong.

Mr. Cox said Mr. Hall had delivered an "honest and sensible and reasonable speech'' and he stressed that Mr. Commissiong did not "speak for the PLP in any way''.

The PLP's platform had specifically dealt with income tax and made it clear the Government did not intend to impose it in any form, he said.

On the matter of corporate tax Mr. Cox said he was "not ruling it out but not ruling it in either.'' He said the completed tax-structure review and recommendations would be on his desk next month.

An irate Mr. Commissiong contacted The Royal Gazette after reading Mr. Hall's remarks in Wednesday's paper and said he was commenting as a Bermudian "political figure and a businessman''. He was particularly enraged at the comment on "robbing from the rich to give to the poor'' even though Mr. Hall was insisting the PLP Government would not do that.

And he was "concerned about the inordinate power which the Brian Halls of Bermuda are wielding'' since the Island did not have tiered income tax.

"We need more equity in terms of the way by which Government raises its revenue because right now a disproportionate burden falls on the working and middle classes,'' he said.

"Meanwhile the Brian Halls of Bermuda and others at the top echelon of the corporate sector, by comparison, get away virtually Scot-free.'' He said the recent scrutiny with which global bodies like the OECD were looking at Bermuda meant it was time for a complete tax system overhaul.

And no business would "cry about three or four percent corporate tax''.

"I believe we're going to have to go down that road. Some may argue corporations already pay tax on income via payroll tax and company fees but that in and of itself does not equate with a pure tax on income.'' "My point is that even if this review is almost finished and the recommendations are in hand, the debate should be far from over.''