The Bill Keeps Growing: Windfall Tax Expansion Adds to a Mounting Cost Burden on Businesses and Consumers

Less than two months after the April 30 general election, Antiguans and Barbudans are confronting an accelerating accumulation of tax increases and rising costs — with the latest increase, confirmed by Cabinet this week, signaling that the pressure on household and business budgets is not finished growing.

Windfall Tax Expanded to All Companies Earning Over EC$1 Million

The government has confirmed that its windfall profits tax will be expanded by 10% to apply to all companies in Antigua and Barbuda earning more than EC$1 million in annual profits. Director General of Communications Maurice Merchant confirmed the decision following Thursday's post-Cabinet media briefing. "All companies within Antigua and Barbuda who make a million plus dollars, they would be required to pay that tax — on profits, that is," Merchant said.

The expanded tax is intended to provide a sustainable source of funding for the government's free tertiary education programme, including tuition assistance for students attending the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus. Merchant said the measure will take effect after the necessary legislative amendments are approved by Parliament.

Businesses to Absorb Windfall Tax Increase or Pass on to Consumers?

The windfall tax may be levied on company profits, but businesses do not absorb increased costs in isolation — they pass them on. With Antigua and Barbuda's corporate tax rate already sitting at 25%, an additional 10% windfall tax levy would push effective tax rates for profitable businesses substantially higher. Observers have already noted that some companies will face what amounts to a combined corporate and windfall rate of approximately 35% — a burden that economists and business owners universally agree finds its way, in whole or in part, into the prices charged to consumers.

Those concerns were not addressed in the Cabinet briefing, and no impact assessment of the expanded tax on prices or business investment has been publicly released.

A Pattern of Escalating Costs

The windfall tax expansion is the latest addition to a list of cost increases that has been growing steadily since the election.

Electricity customers have already absorbed two fuel variation charge increases since April — from 55 cents per kilowatt-hour in both March and April, to 70 cents in May, and then again to 80 cents in June. APUA attributed the June increase to the rising international market cost of fuel used to generate electricity. That is a 45% rise in the electricity fuel charge component in the space of three months — imposed without public consultation and without any compensatory relief for those least able to afford it.

Cabinet last week also approved an increase in the passenger head tax from US$40 to US$50 for international travellers and residents returning from international flights — a 25% rise directed toward funding regional institutions. This tax increase is embedded in airline ticket prices and affects all who travel on international flights into and out of Antigua and Barbuda, including citizens travelling for work, medical care, education, and family obligations.

Additionally, the water rate increase is still coming. Prime Minister Browne has already signaled that the current flat rate of EC$22 could rise to EC$30 — a further 36% increase on a basic utility that every household in the country cannot avoid paying.

A Population Already Under Pressure

All of this is landing on a population whose finances were already stretched before the election. The April 2026 Consumer Price Index recorded overall inflation of 3.1% annually, driven by a staggering 60.3% annual rise in the transport services index — the direct result of soaring airline fares — alongside a 30.2% increase in the Recreation and Culture index and a 13.3% increase in Education costs.

Against that backdrop, the Antigua and Barbuda Pensioners Association has been pushing urgently for relief. ABPA President Evans Bennett, speaking on behalf of the nation's approximately 15,000 pensioners, called for a "livable pension" standard and food vouchers for those receiving the lowest monthly payments. "We cannot just accept or live under 5% for pensioners who are getting $500 a month," he said, warning that the healthcare budget is being strained by rising chronic disease, while the cost of food, utilities, and healthcare continues to climb.

Who Is Paying, and Who Is Deciding?

The picture that emerges from the first two months of Antigua and Barbuda's fifth Browne term is one of a government moving swiftly to raise revenues through a combination of business taxes, utility charges, and travel levies — without putting any of these measures to Parliament before the election, without commissioning public impact assessments, and without indicating any corresponding relief for households on the lowest incomes.

The windfall tax, whatever its merits as a funding mechanism for tertiary education, does not exist in isolation. It enters an economy where electricity bills have risen twice in three months, where airfares have jumped 60% year-on-year, where a water rate increase is on the horizon, and where the nation's pensioners are asking for food vouchers simply to get by.

The central question — who ultimately bears the cost of all of these increases — is one that the government has yet to answer.