T&T will seek extension from the United States Government of the September 30 deadline for implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
This was the outcome of a 30-minute meeting yesterday between Government and the Opposition to discuss the proposed legislation.
Following talks at the Parliament Building in Port-of-Spain, Finance Minister Colm Imbert told reporters: "What we are going to do now is speak to the US Treasury to see if we can get an extension of time to allow a proper Joint Select Committee (JSC) session to take place after the budget."
He said he was confident the request will be granted, adding that Government had agreed "to facilitate the Opposition with a proper JSC, not a rush job and not a piecemeal job."
In an immediate response, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who did not attend the hastily arranged meeting, said she was happy about the development. At last Friday's sitting of the House of Representatives she had said the Opposition would not be supporting the bill without amendments.
Persad-Bissessar said she had always felt there was sufficient time "for arrangements to be made in order to get good legislation passed rather than rushed legislation."
She added: "This concession by the Government shows that it has taken our concerns on board and we welcome those concessions."
Persad-Bissessar said the Opposition's concerns were about "invasion of privacy, insufficient provisions for parliamentary scrutiny and for the draconian and intrusive powers being given to the Minister of Finance in the bill."
Chief Whip Ganga Singh led the three-member Opposition team, which included Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie and Naparima MP Rodney Charles. The Government team comprised Imbert, Planning Minister Camille Robinson-Regis and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young.
Emerging from the meeting first, Opposition MP Tewarie said the proposal to have the legislation put before a JSC had been rejected when it was first made by Persad-Bissessar during her contribution to Friday's debate on the legislation.
Tewarie described the meeting as "short but good" and said Government was given every commitment "that we are prepared to work with them to ensure that the bill is passed by the deadline. And we indicated that we wanted to do that through a Joint Select Committee process." He said if that required parliamentarians to work "over the coming weekend, or at nights, we will work with them to make sure that we could pass the bill in Parliament before September 30."
Minutes later Imbert and his team emerged and said there appeared to be some miscommunication about the meeting as Government had been prepared to look at the bill clause by clause. He said when the Opposition insisted on a JSC they were told of the difficulty with that proposal as Government was not in favour of a "rushed" JSC and wanted stakeholders such as the Bankers' Association of T&T (BATT), the Securities Exchange Commission, Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) and others to participate.
"I would have preferred we did it today but we are going to give the process to the JSC, as was requested, and make sure that is done properly, rather than rushing it through," he said.
Imbert denied that the Finance Minister will have access to personal banking information under the proposed legislation.
"Absolutely not and we are not going to allow that," he said.
The measure is expected to improve the exchange of tax information between the two countries and ensure that US citizens earning income in this country pay their taxes. The legislation provides for the Act to be administered by the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR).