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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Time against T&T on FATCA

by

20170106

The clock is tick­ing. The breath­ing room grant­ed by the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment for T&T to pass the For­eign Ac­count Tax­pay­er Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) leg­is­la­tion is quick­ly run­ning out and there are now on­ly weeks left be­fore the Feb­ru­ary 2017 dead­line giv­en for this coun­try to be­come ful­ly com­plaint and avoid sig­nif­i­cant reper­cus­sions.

To­day, in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it will be up to this coun­try's 42 elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to do the right thing when de­lib­er­a­tions re­sume in the com­mit­tee stage of this vi­tal piece of leg­is­la­tion. Hope­ful­ly, the mea­sures will be con­sid­ered ob­jec­tive­ly and in the in­ter­est of T&T this time around, avoid­ing the dra­ma and fin­ger-point­ing that has been an un­for­tu­nate fea­ture of po­lit­i­cal de­lib­er­a­tions on the Bill thus far.

The FAT­CA Bill is the one is­sue that this coun­try's leg­is­la­tors would have done well not to politi­cise. Still, it isn't too late for the two sides to wipe the slate clean and demon­strate true bi­par­ti­san­ship, do­ing all that is nec­es­sary to­day to safe­guard their con­stituents and the econ­o­my from the se­vere con­se­quences of FAT­CA non-com­pli­ance.

On the last oc­ca­sion that the leg­is­la­tion was con­sid­ered by Par­lia­ment, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert tabled a se­ries of amend­ments which will be con­sid­ered when the com­mit­tee stage re­sumes. How­ev­er, the sig­nals from the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is that they are un­flinch­ing in their re­solve not to vote for the Bill un­less it is first con­sid­ered by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment.

Giv­en the his­to­ry of this leg­is­la­tion and that fact that its draft­ing and de­vel­op­ment has stretched over two po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions, it should have been easy for the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the UNC to ar­rive at a con­sen­sus on FAT­CA.

Af­ter all, while the In­ter-Gov­ern­men­tal Agree­ment (IGA) was de­vel­oped dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, with the UNC as the main po­lit­i­cal par­ty in that gov­ern­ment, it fi­nal­ly went in­to force last year un­der the PNM. Why, then, has it be­come so dif­fi­cult to move through the next stage of FAT­CA com­pli­ance?

Time is not on T&T's side where this mat­ter is con­cerned. This coun­try has been fac­ing this mat­ter for al­most sev­en years, ever since the US Con­gress en­act­ed leg­is­la­tion in 2010 that ex­tends the reach of that coun­try's tax law to T&T and oth­er parts of the world.

For al­most that length of time, there have been dis­cus­sions, of­ten very pas­sion­ate, on which some see as strict and ex­pen­sive oblig­a­tions be­ing im­posed by the US on gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies and in­sti­tu­tions.

The re­al­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that FAT­CA may be just the be­gin­ning. Tax com­pli­ance is rapid­ly be­come a glob­al pri­or­i­ty and the US is not the on­ly ju­ris­dic­tion look­ing for tax evaders.

At the core of the FAT­CA agen­da is an ef­fort to deal once and for all with the prob­lem of tax eva­sion. On a much larg­er scale, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) is work­ing on in­tro­duc­tion of the Com­mon Re­port­ing Stan­dard (CRS) to fa­cil­i­tate the au­to­mat­ic ex­change of tax in­for­ma­tion be­tween non-US coun­tries.

There­fore, this is not a mat­ter of giv­ing in to the im­pe­ri­al­is­tic am­bi­tions of any sin­gle coun­try.

While Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment here per­sist with their un­nec­es­sary spar­ring over FAT­CA, push­ing the coun­try ever clos­er to fi­nan­cial con­se­quences no one wants to face, the US Trea­sury has this month start­ed up­dat­ing their IGA list to re-eval­u­ate the progress of all ju­ris­dic­tions that have failed to bring them in­to force.

At present, T&T is in a very dif­fi­cult place with the FAT­CA im­passe, along with the loom­ing strike at state-owned Petrotrin threat­en­ing to fur­ther desta­bilise an econ­o­my that has al­ready suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant de­cline.

To­day, in Par­lia­ment, it will be up to the MPs to put the coun­try's in­ter­ests first.

Hope­ful­ly, the mea­sures will be con­sid­ered ob­jec­tive­ly and in the in­ter­est of T&T this time around, avoid­ing the dra­ma and fin­ger-point­ing that has been an un­for­tu­nate fea­ture of po­lit­i­cal de­lib­er­a­tions on the Bill thus far.


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