The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) is urg­ing the Op­po­si­tion to ful­ly co­op­er­ate to en­sure the pas­sage of the In­come Tax (Amend­ment) Bill 2018. It was on­ly last week that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem faces for­eign cen­sure and chaos if Par­lia­ment failed to pass a bill to share tax de­tails with for­eign states.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week de­bat­ed Im­bert’s mo­tion for the House to adopt the re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the In­come Tax (Amend­ment) Bill 2018. On the bill’s fa­cil­i­ta­tion of an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion be­tween gov­ern­ments to com­bat tax avoid­ance and tax eva­sion by cor­po­ra­tions and in­di­vid­u­als un­der the Glob­al Fo­rum, Im­bert warned of con­se­quences for in­ac­tion.

In a state­ment on the is­sue, BATT called on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to sup­port the pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion and swift­ly pass mean­ing­ful tax re­form leg­is­la­tion in re­spect of the bill to en­sure T&T’s com­pli­ance with the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard on ex­change of in­for­ma­tion on re­quest, com­mon­ly re­ferred as the EOIR stan­dard.

“The pro­posed amend­ments would fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion for tax pur­pos­es and ef­fec­tive­ly com­bat mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing. This is in line with BATT’s ef­forts to en­sure a stronger and more sta­ble fi­nan­cial sec­tor macro­eco­nom­ic frame­work that sus­tains eco­nom­ic growth,” BATT said.

“The amend­ments de­signed to im­prove com­pli­ance will ad­vance T&T’s in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings and will en­able banks to ef­fi­cient­ly main­tain cross-bor­der cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tion­ships.”

While BATT said it had not­ed the con­cerns ex­pressed by some Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, it said it want­ed to as­sure the pub­lic that ad­e­quate mech­a­nisms are in place in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and do­mes­ti­cal­ly to pre­vent any abuse of the in­for­ma­tion shared with any ju­ris­dic­tion.

“As with the pas­sage of the FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion, on­ly in­for­ma­tion rel­a­tive to cit­i­zens of for­eign ju­ris­dic­tion will be el­i­gi­ble for shar­ing with those ju­ris­dic­tions.

“Fail­ure to pass this leg­is­la­tion could dis­rupt the smooth flow of cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween do­mes­tic banks and our in­ter­na­tion­al cor­re­spon­dents. Cog­nizant of the vi­tal role that cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing plays in the func­tion­ing of the lo­cal fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try and the wider econ­o­my, BATT urges co­op­er­a­tion in the pas­sage of the In­come Tax (Amend­ment) Bill, so as to en­sure com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­tegri­ty stan­dards,” BATT said.

BATT added that it looks for­ward to in­creased ef­forts to­wards ex­pe­dit­ing this ob­jec­tive and pledged its sup­port to achieve this goal.