Gail Alexan­der

The Fi­nance Min­istry projects col­lect­ing $680 mil­lion - or pos­si­bly more - from the tax amnesty that is due to be­gin on No­vem­ber 14.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed this in pi­lot­ing a Fi­nance Bill in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

The bill dealt with op­er­a­tional­is­ing some of the mea­sures an­nounced in the 2023 Bud­get de­liv­ered in Sep­tem­ber.

Cer­tain mea­sures be­gin this year while oth­ers be­gin on Jan­u­ary 1, 2023. A sec­ond Fi­nance Bill will be brought next month to ac­ti­vate those mea­sures.

Im­bert said the tax amnesty would as­sist those who were un­able to pay their tax­es on time dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, per­haps due to dif­fi­cul­ties in fi­nal­is­ing their ac­counts.

The amnesty will ex­tend from No­vem­ber 14, 2022, to Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, and can be ex­tend­ed fur­ther on or­der. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 tax­pay­ers are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from this.

It will be the eighth tax amnesty in the last 22 years. Over $5 bil­lion was col­lect­ed by gov­ern­ments via amnesties in that time.

Col­lec­tions from pre­vi­ous amnesties were: 2010 ($1.6B), 2014/15 ($2.4B) 2016 ($766.7 mil­lion), 2019 ($2.4B), 2021 ($1.1B).

It was pro­ject­ed in 2019 that Gov­ern­ment would col­lect $1B but it ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived $2.4B, which par­tic­u­lar­ly as­sist­ed cash flows and rev­enue.

From the up­com­ing amnesty, he said Gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tive­ly projects col­lect­ing $680m.

“And if what hap­pened in 2019 hap­pens now, then it could be twice as much as that,” he said.

In the 2021 amnesty, a to­tal of 25,920 tax­pay­ers used the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“In all amnesties, we’ve had very long lines at the Board In­land Rev­enue, es­pe­cial­ly on the last day, you know Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans how they op­er­ate - last minute..” Im­bert added.

While the amnesty will waive penal­ties and in­ter­est on tax pay­ments, he said it does not waive the ac­tu­al tax owed and wasn’t a “get-out-of-jail card. He not­ed most tax of­fences car­ry jail time im­posed at a judge’s dis­cre­tion and amnesty doesn’t in­ter­fere with that dis­cre­tion or the BIR’s abil­i­ty to pur­sue crim­i­nal con­duct.

Im­bert said peo­ple can be pros­e­cut­ed for tax fraud be­fore, dur­ing or af­ter an amnesty. If tax­es aren’t set­tled dur­ing the amnesty, in­ter­est and penal­ties will be re­in­stat­ed af­ter.

Dur­ing Ques­tion Time for Min­is­ters, UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh grilled Min­is­ters Ro­han Sinanan and Faris Al-Rawi on roads and bridges in Cen­tral Trinidad, draw­ing at­ten­tion to the “moth­er of all pot­holes” in his area.