The Income Tax (Amendment) Bill is heading for debate in the Senate on Tuesday with Opposition concerns still looming, particularly over the way it was passed in the Lower House last Friday.
“The way the Bill was passed shows that Prime Minister Keith Rowley was right last Friday when he told the Opposition Leader that day there was no deadline for the Bill.
“But Government knew this all along and their approach on this made us waste a lot of time recently when we could have completed everything and passed the entire Bill,” Opposition Senator Saddam Hosein said yesterday.
The Bill, which required Opposition votes, was passed last Friday after weeks of contention between Government and Opposition. Government said the legislation was required to meet Global Forum and European Union formats for tax information sharing and to meet a Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) deadline.
Government amended the Bill following Opposition concerns, but the Opposition maintained its objection up to Friday’s final vote. The UNC insisted the Bill needed to be discussed by a Parliamentary committee along with two other bills which were initially part of the package.
With no Opposition support available, Government amended the Bill to remove the clauses which required a special majority vote.
However, the Opposition still did not support it. The amended bill was passed with a simple majority.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert subsequently said the part that was passed involved clauses necessary to meet the CFATF deadline last Friday, or T&T would have been blacklisted. He said the clauses required to meet the Global Forum tax information requirements were removed to allow passage. He said talks will be held with the Global Forum next year and he expects the Bill to return to Parliament early next year.
The Bill in its amended form, minus the special majority clauses, will be debated in the Senate this afternoon.
Hosein said Government’s move to pull out the clauses that required special majority votes removed half of the reason for the bill “which shows they were wasting everyone’s time in the approach they used, obfuscating the issues.
“If they had been straight all along and stopped delaying and bringing up all kinds of issues since June, trying to make the Opposition look bad, we would have been able to properly discuss all the necessary Bills and pass everything in time for December 31, which was the Global Forum deadline, rather than having this done piecemeal and have to go back to the Bill next year.
“In fact, what happened to the Global Forum’s December 31 deadline since those clauses weren’t passed? Timing and planning wasn’t the Government’s focus on this other than politicking purposes.
“At least Government boiled down to amending parts of the Bill where we called for judicial oversight for police accessing taxpayer information and police power can’t be abused, as Imbert said last Friday, for a cuss case or fowl thief case,” Hosein said.