An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over claims that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion de­liv­ered Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions, ar­gu­ing that the record does not sup­port that nar­ra­tive.

Beck­les con­tend­ed that the sub­stan­tive tech­ni­cal, leg­isla­tive and diplo­mat­ic work re­quired to sat­is­fy the Eu­ro­pean Union’s five delist­ing cri­te­ria was com­plet­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the April 28, 2025, gen­er­al elec­tion.

“The facts are straight­for­ward,” she said. “Delist­ing was not achieved through press re­leas­es or post-elec­tion de­c­la­ra­tions. It re­quired mea­sur­able im­ple­men­ta­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion over sev­er­al years.”

Beck­les said the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion passed all 10 pieces of leg­is­la­tion re­quired to bring T&T in­to com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al tax good gov­er­nance stan­dards. She point­ed to the Glob­al Fo­rum Sec­ond Round Phase Two on­site ex­am­i­na­tion con­duct­ed in Oc­to­ber 2024, dur­ing which T&T demon­strat­ed a func­tion­ing com­pli­ance regime. That as­sess­ment re­sult­ed in an over­all “Large­ly Com­pli­ant” rat­ing, pub­lished in Ju­ly 2025, based on en­force­ment sys­tems and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works that were al­ready in place be­fore the change of gov­ern­ment.

Beck­les al­so high­light­ed the sign­ing of the OECD Mul­ti­lat­er­al Con­ven­tion on Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tance in Tax Mat­ters on No­vem­ber 7, 2024, which im­me­di­ate­ly ex­pand­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tax in­for­ma­tion ex­change net­work to 148 ju­ris­dic­tions.

She not­ed that the harm­ful Free Trade Zones regime was abol­ished in De­cem­ber 2024, fol­low­ing re­view by the Fo­rum on Harm­ful Tax Prac­tices, while the BEPS In­clu­sive Frame­work Coun­try-by-Coun­try Re­port­ing Act, No. 2 of 2024, was ful­ly pro­claimed and op­er­a­tional by the end of that year. Au­to­mat­ic Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion leg­is­la­tion and re­lat­ed le­gal no­tices were al­so com­plet­ed ahead of the 2025 elec­tion.

She ar­gued that in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports is­sued in late 2025 and ear­ly 2026 re­flect ground­work laid one to two years ear­li­er, with the EU’s for­mal de­ci­sion on Tues­day rep­re­sent­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of that pri­or work.

“The UNC in­her­it­ed a com­pli­ance process al­ready sub­stan­tial­ly com­plet­ed. To sug­gest oth­er­wise is to mis­lead the pub­lic,” Beck­les as­sert­ed, adding that T&T “de­serves hon­esty, not po­lit­i­cal ap­pro­pri­a­tion of achieve­ments earned be­fore the change of gov­ern­ment.”

Mean­while, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) not­ed that re­moval from the EU list is ex­pect­ed to en­hance in­vestor con­fi­dence, im­prove ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets and re­duce rep­u­ta­tion­al and com­pli­ance risks for lo­cal busi­ness­es en­gag­ing with Eu­ro­pean part­ners.

Am­cham T&T added that it has long ad­vo­cat­ed for delist­ing and looks for­ward to con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion to sup­port reg­u­la­to­ry cer­tain­ty and a more com­pet­i­tive in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment.