The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Bars and Restau­rants (TTCO­BAR) and the Bar­keep­ers Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) are warn­ing that the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to in­crease the Amuse­ment Gam­ing Tax from $6,000 to $25,000 per ma­chine per year will crip­ple small and medi­um-sized bar en­ter­pris­es and lead to wide­spread clo­sures and job loss­es.

In a joint re­sponse is­sued yes­ter­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tions said the in­crease rep­re­sents a more than 400 per cent jump in tax­a­tion and will make le­gal op­er­a­tion fi­nan­cial­ly im­pos­si­ble for hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ty-based bars that re­ly on gam­ing rev­enue to stay open and main­tain staff.

“This pol­i­cy amounts to a di­rect shut­down of small and medi­um sized bar en­ter­pris­es that de­pend on reg­u­lat­ed gam­ing rev­enue to sur­vive,” the joint state­ment said.

“For many bars, gam­ing in­come is what pays work­ers, cov­ers util­i­ties, and keeps doors open in the face of ris­ing food, labour, and op­er­at­ing costs.”

In­dus­try da­ta cit­ed by the groups shows that for a mod­est bar op­er­at­ing 10 ma­chines, the an­nu­al gam­ing tax would rise from $60,000 to $250,000, an in­crease of $190,000 per year, which they say ex­ceeds the to­tal net prof­it of many small and medi­um-sized es­tab­lish­ments.

The tax in­crease is con­tained in Clause 20 of the Bill, which would amend the Liquor Li­cences Act, Chap. 84:10, sec­tion 20B, to raise the gam­ing tax from $6,000 to $25,000 per amuse­ment ma­chine. The clause al­so in­creas­es the gam­ing tax on elec­tron­ic roulette from $120,000 to $200,000 per de­vice and re­places the Sec­ond Sched­ule to pro­vide for new li­cence du­ties un­der the Act.

TTCO­BAR and BOATT warned that the im­me­di­ate con­se­quences would in­clude the clo­sure of hun­dreds of bars, re­trench­ment of thou­sands of work­ers, loss of VAT, NIS, PAYE, liquor li­cence fees and cor­po­ra­tion tax rev­enue, and rapid ex­pan­sion of il­le­gal and un­reg­u­lat­ed gam­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

“You can­not im­pose a tax of this mag­ni­tude on strug­gling small and medi­um-sized bar en­ter­pris­es and ex­pect sur­vival,” the or­gan­i­sa­tions said.

“This pol­i­cy will not grow Gov­ern­ment rev­enue, it will shrink the le­gal gam­ing in­dus­try, de­stroy com­pli­ance, and push ac­tiv­i­ty un­der­ground.”

The groups al­so warned of wider so­cial fall­out, in­clud­ing ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, the col­lapse of com­mu­ni­ty-based bars and in­creased pres­sure on law en­force­ment as il­le­gal gam­ing ex­pands.

They called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly halt the pro­posed in­crease, en­ter ur­gent and mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with bar sec­tor stake­hold­ers on a rea­son­able tax rate, and fo­cus on en­force­ment and com­pli­ance rather than puni­tive tax in­creas­es.

“This is­sue goes be­yond gam­ing ma­chines,” the joint state­ment con­clud­ed.

“This is about whether the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to shut down the very small and medi­um-sized bar en­ter­pris­es that sup­port thou­sands of fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The pro­posed tax in­crease forms part of amend­ments to the Gam­bling and Bet­ting Act, Chap. 11:19, which al­so in­tro­duce sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er penal­ties for of­fences, in­clud­ing fines of up to three mil­lion dol­lars and prison terms of up to sev­en years on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment.

The mat­ter will come up when the Gov­ern­ment de­bates the Fi­nance Bill 2025 in Par­lia­ment to­day.

Speak­ing about the bill on Wednes­day, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert point­ed to the in­tro­duc­tion of tax­es on plas­tic bags and pack­ages, quadru­pled li­cence fees for gam­ing ma­chines, the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge for in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers and in­creased fees for brew­ing beer and rum.

“Re­gres­sive tax­a­tion! The more peo­ple you em­ploy for brew­ing, the more you’re taxed. Noth­ing to stim­u­late the econ­o­my, it’ll en­cour­age tax eva­sion,” Im­bert added.