Belize Tax Service Department staff walked off the job today in protest of the Revenue Authority Bill, 2026, with PSU President Dean Flowers praising staff for taking a stand while sharply criticising BTSD’s management for staying silent.
Flowers said he was encouraged by what he heard from staff across the department’s various offices. “I’m very pleased with the report that I received from the various offices of the Belize Tax Services Department. It shows me that the staff are taking ownership and taking responsibility for their future.”
He was far less complimentary toward BTSD’s management team, accusing them of abandoning staff facing job insecurity instead of defending them. “Clearly their management, their entire management team, has abandoned them, which is a damn shame. When your employees face the kind of anxiety and uncertainty about their job security, that is where true leaders show up and try to alleviate or reduce those fears. Instead, the management team of the BTSD has become parrots, repeating government nonsense. Your staff already have a job. Your duty is to build their capacity so that they can keep that job and become the best employees. Your duty as a leader is not to offload them. Shame on you and shame on the entire management team. You guys are disgraceful.”
Flowers also took aim at area representatives who supported the bill, arguing it strips oversight from nearly a billion dollars in public funds. “This bill removes all oversight from almost a billion dollars. This bill puts all the authority on how money is spent, how goods and services are procured, and how contracts are issued. It puts it in one political person. How can you all, being elected by the people, for the people, support such nonsense? It’s either an indication that you did not read the bill, or it’s an indication that you did not comprehend what you read, or it’s an indication that your attitude is, ‘To hell with the Belizean people, party over country.’”
He’s calling on the public to read the legislation for themselves and reject it while confirming he plans to lobby social partner senators to vote it down if it reaches the Senate. “I am imploring the Belizean people to read that bill and to reject that bill. And I will be lobbying the social partner senators so that when that bill goes to the Senate, they reject it.”
Today’s walkout follows a formal PSU release accusing the government of shutting the union out of the legislative process entirely. According to the union, the Project Steering Committee overseeing BTSD’s transition into a semi-autonomous revenue authority never properly considered PSU input before the bill advanced, and a staff-driven submission compiled in July was never presented to the Finance and Economic Development Committee when it reviewed the bill on August 12th.
