An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The In­land Rev­enue di­vi­sion is per­form­ing poor­ly in key ar­eas in­clud­ing cus­tomer ser­vice.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who cit­ed a re­port pre­pared by a team from the Caribbean Re­gion­al Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Cen­tre or Car­tac, which is a unit of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund.

“This is a re­gion­al IMF unit look­ing at our In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion, look­ing at its per­for­mance. Look­ing at how it treats the pub­lic, how easy it is to in­ter­act with them, how ef­fi­cient they are, and so on. It is a tax di­ag­nos­tic tool and the last re­port they got, the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion did not do well in most cat­e­gories,” Im­bert de­tailed.

Im­bert de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of Trinidad & To­ba­go (ICATT) con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

He said he was not sur­prised the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion has not im­proved since the last sur­veys which were con­duct­ed in 2017 and 2019. This is the rea­son for the push for the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, which he adds is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly on stream by March 2025.

Re­gard­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor, the min­is­ter says he has giv­en a di­rec­tive to his staff to find out why the en­er­gy sec­tor is ze­ro-rat­ed and when this hap­pened be­cause there is po­ten­tial for forex leak­age.

“This is what cre­ates the prob­lem for re­funds. Let's say we have $6 bil­lion in ar­rears in out­stand­ing VAT re­funds, you may not know but $5 bil­lion out of that $6 bil­lion is in the en­er­gy sec­tor. The rea­son be­ing is the en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies are en­ti­tled to a 100 per cent re­fund on the VAT they pay.”

Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that with the cre­ation of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, T&T is es­tab­lish­ing a foun­da­tion for tax ad­min­is­tra­tion.

This would al­low the tax au­thor­i­ties to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with chron­ic and seem­ing in­sur­mount­able prob­lems such as dif­fi­cul­ties in ac­cess­ing the tax pay­ment sys­tem, un­der­staffing of the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and un­ac­cept­able de­lays in as­sess­ment and re­funds.

This, he said, would sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­ter the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty's fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and au­di­tors and ac­coun­tants are es­sen­tial to the TTRA's op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion.

Im­bert not­ed with the re­cent Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion con­firm­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Act, the min­istry is now ex­pe­dit­ing the Au­thor­i­ty's for­ma­tion and growth and up­dat­ing the coun­try's rev­enue col­lec­tion op­er­a­tions.  

“Our top pri­or­i­ties in­clude clos­ing the large tax gap, caused by tax eva­sion and mak­ing it much eas­i­er for the gen­er­al pub­lic to ac­cess on­line tax ser­vices and mak­ing the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion more ac­ces­si­ble and user friend­ly,” the min­is­ter dis­closed.