YOUR Opinion entitled "Build it and they will come?'' ( Mid-Ocean News , February 5), where you lament the demise of tourism, also raises the question of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development's views on Bermudian taxation.

Right now we are out there trying to convince the OECD that Bermuda's industries are evenly taxed. No one gets a break. Tax exempted or tourism, both groups of business bear the same burden. Taxes, we say, are evenly applied -- here in Bermuda they are simply less than in the United States and in Europe.

It is to be hoped that those in the OECD who will decide our fate will not look too closely at this smoke and mirrors fabrication.

If they do, they will soon see that in reality our primary revenue raising system in Bermuda, that underwrites the exempted company tax exemption, is in fact a heavy consumption tax imposed on spending.

They will quickly see, as the great majority of Bermudians depend ultimately for their pay on tourism, and support the revenue structure by spending that pay, that tourism bears the lion's share of the revenue burden.

In short, a chamber maid and an underwriter at Ace (or local lawyer) both pay a shocking $6 per imperial gallon for gas, but as there are far more workers for tourism than underwriters at Ace, the mass of the Government's revenue derives from tourism's payroll.

This payroll itself is astronomically higher than a similar payroll in competing destinations; after all, the chambermaid must be paid sufficient to buy $6 gas.

This cost, plus the ratcheted-up payroll tax that goes with it, perforce, must be passed on to the tourist who, as you point out, has declined to pay and gone elsewhere. Ipso facto down the tubes went tourism.

Remember also, Ace can pay some of the money not paid to the Government to the employees, thus making it a more attractive employment prospect for young Bermudians. How is the tourism sector to compete with this? So, the more labour-intensive the industry, the more revenue it yields to the Government and, coincidentally, the less the individual employee gets to keep.

Because of the consumption tax, which makes everything here so incredibly expensive (and that much of the tourism industry is also saddled with collecting) the hospitality industry, as you say, is a smoking ruin.

It has been literally taxed out of business. Compared with the burgeoning exempted companies (and the equally exempt local professional services industry) the direct and indirect tax burden on tourism is out of all proportion.

The lure offered to a new second industry in the 1950s -- exempting it from taxation -- has now created, to all intents and purposes, a tax-free monster, surrounded by similarly unburdened local hangers-on, including our own local insurance industry, that the old tourism revenue base can no longer pay for.

Far bigger now in terms of income that tourism ever was, it is a colossus that nevertheless demands all the public services, such as the schools, that our tourism-based taxation system must now finance in addition.

Once tourism is bled dry and finally bankrupt, the only new source of revenue available will be the local professional services and the exempted companies themselves. To support the two-thirds of Bermudians once employed by tourism, the tax demand upon this remaining industry will be impossible. Rather than pay, the exempt companies will move on elsewhere. Where then will we be? Q.E.D., City of Hamilton PS: Without the tourists, what will keep the air services operating?