GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) has been of­fi­cial­ly scrapped by the Gov­ern­ment.

The bill to re­peal the TTRA was passed in the Low­er House just af­ter 1:15 am yes­ter­day with 27 votes in favour, in­clud­ing sup­port from To­ba­go East MP David Thomas.

Eleven of the 13 Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MPs vot­ed against it.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is were ab­sent. To­ba­go West MP Joel Samp­son was al­so ab­sent.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her con­tri­bu­tion, de­scribed the TTRA Act as an “abysmal fail­ure.”

She said if ful­ly op­er­a­tionalised, it would have as­sumed po­lit­i­cal con­trol of tax ad­min­is­tra­tion and en­force­ment in place of the rev­enue col­lec­tion struc­tures which have ex­ist­ed seam­less­ly since in­de­pen­dence, 61 years to date.

The PM fur­ther stat­ed that the TTRA was well on the way to be­com­ing a “PNM par­ty group”, adding that the act fa­cil­i­tat­ed a high lev­el of po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence.

“It might as well have been called the ‘Im­bert’ be­cause of the un­prece­dent­ed amount of pow­er that it gave to him,” she said, adding that such pow­ers were “in­tru­sive, wide, and var­ied”.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who pi­lot­ed the bill, stat­ed the re­peal would al­low the Gov­ern­ment to rein­vest in the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing rev­enue agen­cies, name­ly the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, which the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to strength­en.

Econ­o­mist: There was nev­er any com­pelling need to cre­ate a TTRA

Guardian Me­dia reached out to econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon, who said there was nev­er any com­pelling need to cre­ate a TTRA.

“All we need­ed to do was solve the in­ef­fi­cien­cies of the BIR–un­der­staffing, out­dat­ed process­es, weak com­pli­ance sys­tems, in­suf­fi­cient train­ing, etc. In­stead of es­tab­lish­ing the TTRA, which had sig­nif­i­cant start­up costs and po­lit­i­cal bag­gage, the more log­i­cal and cost-ef­fec­tive ap­proach would have been to strength­en the ex­ist­ing BIR and ad­dress these op­er­a­tional in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

“This would have yield­ed far greater im­prove­ments in tax ad­min­is­tra­tion, broad­ened the tax base, and nar­rowed the $12 bil­lion tax gap, all with­out rais­ing tax rates,” he ex­plained.

Var­i­ous en­ti­ties al­so shared their per­spec­tive on the re­peal.

Di­anne Joseph, pres­i­dent of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI), said this was the ful­fil­ment of a promise made by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, not­ing that it came as no sur­prise giv­en the fact that the par­ty had in­di­cat­ed very ear­ly con­cerns about job loss­es, lack of trans­paren­cy and threats to ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the pub­lic sec­tor.

“When all the con­cerns from the UNC, the work­ers and trade unions are tak­en in­to ac­count, there may be good grounds for re­form of the act,” she said.

From a gov­er­nance per­spec­tive, Joseph said the cit­ing of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence or ex­ces­sive pow­er in the hands of any one in­di­vid­ual must al­ways be care­ful­ly scru­ti­nised to en­sure that there is no risk to cit­i­zens or the coun­try.

She said the TTC­SI be­lieves the new Gov­ern­ment should be giv­en the chance to re­view, re­form, and present its strate­gic plans be­fore any fur­ther as­sump­tions are made.

Bal­dath Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), said the cham­ber con­tin­ued to em­pha­sise that any fu­ture frame­work must pri­ori­tise ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy, and fair­ness while re­duc­ing the com­pli­ance bur­den on busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es.

He said the cham­ber looked for­ward to fur­ther en­gage­ment with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure that re­forms sup­port both rev­enue col­lec­tion and pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment and busi­ness­es are not over­bur­dened by un­due bu­reau­cra­cy and un­time­ly re­mit­tance of re­funds.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had sev­er­al con­cerns about how the TTRA would have been ef­fec­tive as the func­tionary body for Cus­toms, BIR and VAT ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The Board of the TTRA was to be ap­point­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, giv­ing it di­rect con­trol of the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions. This could lead to the line min­is­ter’s greater over­sight of TTRA, but more im­por­tant­ly, dic­tat­ing the agen­da of the au­thor­i­ty. This can be a dan­ger­ous re­la­tion­ship if it were to be left unchecked,” he ex­plained.

Singh sug­gest­ed that the ex­ist­ing tax agen­cies be giv­en more hu­man re­sources as he added that of­fice space was in­ad­e­quate for op­er­a­tions.

“They are un­der­staffed. The sys­tem needs to be digi­tised; the long lines out­side the of­fices when VAT is due, for in­stance, have to change, and VAT re­funds need to be ex­pe­dit­ed,” he said.

The TTRA Act which was passed as Act No 17 of 2021, was de­signed to es­tab­lish a cen­tralised au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for tax and cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tion in the coun­try.

The goal was to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and rev­enue col­lec­tion by con­sol­i­dat­ing the func­tions of the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion un­der one um­brel­la.