The onus is now on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, her Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and the en­tire Cab­i­net to do what they claim is re­quired to achieve a more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive tax sys­tem to col­lect a re­port­ed $10 bil­lion deficit in tax rev­enue.

Every gov­ern­ment has the op­tion and man­date to change poli­cies and pro­grammes of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in a man­ner pro­claimed in its elec­tion cam­paign­ing to be su­pe­ri­or. The re­peal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) leg­is­la­tion was an easy cam­paign promise to make and ful­fil. What is now de­mand­ed Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its Coali­tion of In­ter­ests, with the ma­jor­i­ty earned, is to achieve the ob­jec­tives put for­ward to the na­tion.

The es­tab­lish­ment of a trans­formed tax­a­tion sys­tem, in­clu­sive of in­come tax and var­i­ous forms of cor­po­ra­tion tax­es, and do­ing so while en­sur­ing the sys­tem is not re­gres­sive, mean­ing the bur­den of tax­a­tion does not fall on salaried work­ers and those in the low­er and mid­dle- in­come brack­ets, must be the ob­jec­tive. More­over, it must be done with ex­pe­di­en­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness.

As ar­gued by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the TTRA, es­tab­lished by the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, gave too much pow­er to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. The con­tention of all is that the cur­rent sys­tem in place over the last 60-plus years al­lows for mas­sive leak­ages of po­ten­tial and re­al rev­enue and has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for the wealth of in­come earn­ers, in­clud­ing cor­po­ra­tions, to be hid­den away out­side the reach of the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and in for­eign ex­change.

It, there­fore, can­not be that the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment re­jects a sys­tem that was said to pro­vide the ad­min­is­tra­tion with bad­ly need­ed rev­enue to meet so­ci­etal needs, but does noth­ing to cap­ture lost rev­enue. More­over, what­ev­er the re­vised sys­tem turns out to be, it can­not al­low for rev­enue to con­tin­ue to leak out over months and years in­to the fu­ture.

Fur­ther, the changes to be made must of ne­ces­si­ty re­tain the lev­el of in­creased pro­gres­siv­i­ty and should en­sure that all who should pay do so at the rate at which they as­sem­ble large prof­its. Lo­cal and for­eign cor­po­ra­tions, that are un­der-taxed or have been suc­cess­ful in pay­ing low­er rates, pre­vent large quan­ti­ties of rev­enue earned with lo­cal re­sources from right­ful­ly ac­cru­ing to the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.

Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not be put through a process of change from one sys­tem to an­oth­er for on­ly the po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit of one par­ty to an­oth­er; there must al­so be re­wards to the cit­i­zens.

Fur­ther, if, ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, the need is for sim­ple ad­just­ments re­quired in the present BIR sys­tem, the coun­try ex­pects that the trans­for­ma­tion, in­clu­sive of the cap­ture of the re­port­ed out­stand­ing $10 bil­lion, is achieved in the short to medi­um term. Stat­ed as­sured­ly, there must be ben­e­fi­cial re­sults from the re­peal of the TTRA if the Gov­ern­ment is to tru­ly achieve its stat­ed cam­paign promise. As for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day used to say: “Per­for­mance beats ole talk any time.”