Raphael John-Lall

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai says in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prob­lems caused the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion to ex­tend the dead­line for fil­ing tax re­turns."The prob­lem arose as a re­sult of the fact that the re­cent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion caused the late mail­ings of the tax re­turns and al­so the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR's) Web site was not up­dat­ed un­til last week so in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es would not have been able to down­load the re­turns," he said.On Thurs­day, the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion an­nounced an ex­ten­sion of the dead­line for fil­ing fi­nal pay­ments and tax re­turns from April 30 to June 30.

No penal­ties will be ap­plic­a­ble but in­ter­est­nor­mal­ly be due as a re­sult of the late pay­ment of tax­es will be waived once pay­ment is made by June 30. Howai said this is not the first time the dead­line for fil­ing tax re­turns has been ex­tend­ed."I am ad­vised that it oc­curred in the past and usu­al­ly per­sons would be giv­en an ex­tra month to com­ply but it has not oc­curred in the last three years and would prob­a­bly not have oc­curred ex­cept for the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion aris­ing from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) con­cerns ex­pressed by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA)," he said."Cab­i­net has ap­proved a sum of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.5 bil­lion to com­plete the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus build­ings in down­town Port-of-Spain," said Howai. Once this is com­plet­ed in the next 12 months I ex­pect that the OSH prob­lems be­ing com­plained of at the BIR will be a thing of the past."