Lack of fund­ing for the Tax Ap­peal Board has held back the court’s abil­i­ty to process mat­ters of ma­jor fis­cal sig­nif­i­cance, the head of the tax court has said.

In the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the court, chair­man of the board, Judge An­tho­ny D.J. Gafoor re­spond­ed to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s state­ment in May where he ex­plained that bil­lions of dol­lars were be­ing held up in mat­ters be­fore the court.

Min­is­ter Im­bert af­ter an­nounc­ing the tax amnesty in May, said he hoped it would en­cour­age per­sons to with­draw their mat­ters from the Tax Ap­peal Board and pay their tax­es.

“This was most un­for­tu­nate giv­en that we have been work­ing stead­fast­ly with­in an ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed bud­get to de­liv­er time­ly de­ci­sions when many of the big­ger firms which ap­pear be­fore us are of­ten far bet­ter re­sourced than we are,” said Judge Gafoor, who said the court’s bud­get had been re­duced from $10 mil­lion to $8 mil­lion in the past year.

“In our case, re­leas­es of funds have pri­mar­i­ly been giv­en for the pay­ment of salaries re­sult­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant de­lay in meet­ing oth­er ex­pen­di­ture, even for ba­sic ser­vices such as jan­i­to­r­i­al or se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices,” he said.

“The gen­er­al pub­lic may not be aware that we op­er­ate with a skele­ton staff, se­vere­ly lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources as al­ready al­lud­ed to but al­so with lit­tle or no re­search as­sis­tance in terms of prepar­ing and draft­ing de­ci­sions, many of which, as the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has al­lud­ed to, con­cern sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey. This is all the more rea­son why re­form and recog­ni­tion of this court is long over­due and well de­served.”

The re­duc­tion in fund­ing he added, al­so stilt­ed pro­posed up­grades to the court’s Ju­di­cial En­force­ment Man­age­ment Sys­tem and al­most forced the court to can­cel the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing once again. Gafoor said it was the first time the cer­e­mo­ny had been held for five years.

Gafoor, how­ev­er, said the court had a sig­nif­i­cant role to play giv­en the gov­ern­ment’s in­tro­duc­tion of var­i­ous new mea­sures to in­crease rev­enue col­lec­tion such as the on­line levy of sev­en per cent as well as the do­mes­tic ap­pli­ca­tion of the US For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act 2016 (FAT­CA) through the Tax In­for­ma­tion Ex­change Agree­ment.

“Com­pli­ance re­quires the BIR to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the ac­tiv­i­ties of US-con­nect­ed en­ti­ties hav­ing a pres­ence in this ju­ris­dic­tion so as to min­i­mize the scope for tax eva­sion and mon­ey laun­der­ing,” said Gafoor.

He urged for the court to be giv­en the nec­es­sary re­sources to sup­ple­ment these leg­isla­tive changes and al­so called for the gov­ern­ment to ad­just the Tax Ap­peal Board Act and Rules “to en­sure that it is tru­ly re­flec­tive of the sig­nif­i­cance and sta­tus of this ju­di­cial in­sti­tu­tion as a su­pe­ri­or court of record in­clud­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate in­clu­sion of the most mod­ern rules of prac­tice, pro­ce­dure and ev­i­dence.”