En­ti­ties sub­mit­ting an­nu­al re­turns and oth­er Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter re­quire­ments have been re­mind­ed to be up-to-date with their records and in­for­ma­tion af­ter last Fri­day’s last-minute rush to meet the fi­nal dead­line of the amnesty for sub­mis­sions.

Last Sep­tem­ber the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al pub­lished a no­tice that 63,000 com­pa­nies were be­ing re­moved from the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter as they were in­ac­tive. The point was al­so echoed in sub­se­quent Par­lia­ment de­bates to up­grade laws for the com­pa­nies sec­tor to up­hold Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al tax­a­tion re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

On Jan­u­ary 22, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said there would be an ex­ten­sion of the com­pa­nies’ amnesty to Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, giv­ing com­pa­nies one fi­nal op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ply with the Com­pa­nies Act, in terms of fil­ing their an­nu­al re­turns and re­turns of ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship. The pre­vi­ous dead­line was Jan­u­ary 13.

Amour said the fi­nal ex­ten­sion was be­ing done be­fore “the pro­vi­sions of the act are strict­ly en­forced.” The ex­ten­sion was the third. Stake­hold­ers were urged to com­ply with their oblig­a­tions.

Last week’s fi­nal days for sub­mis­sion saw many rush­ing to sub­mit doc­u­ments to the min­istry. Some were in lines last Thurs­day and re­turned again last Fri­day. One per­son, told Guardian Me­dia, they had been there from the wee hours of last Fri­day. Of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs said staff worked dili­gent­ly along­side the crowd. Some of­fi­cials con­tin­ued work­ing even af­ter 4 pm last Fri­day to han­dle peo­ple in line when the de­part­ment closed.

Of­fi­cials from the min­istry al­so sought to re­mind the pub­lic that the min­istry has a help desk con­cern­ing the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter (CROS) sys­tem which was im­ple­ment­ed since new for­mats came in­to be­ing to meet in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tems. These re­quire com­pa­ny share­hold­ers to say if they di­rect­ly own shares (or who does) and oth­er in­for­ma­tion en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy. The desk can help per­sons cre­ate their CROS ac­count to file re­turns.

The for­mat for an­nu­al re­turns changed sev­er­al times since 2020/2021 with the tight­en­ing of laws per­tain­ing to com­pa­nies, trusts and sim­i­lar en­ti­ties to pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion on per­sons be­hind com­pa­nies. This is to pre­vent mon­ey laun­der­ing and sim­i­lar prob­lems.

Changes were to bring T&T in line with the in­ter­na­tion­al tax in­for­ma­tion ex­change re­quired by the Glob­al Fo­rum and Eu­ro­pean Union. The GF mon­i­tors coun­tries that are com­pli­ant/ non-com­pli­ant in shar­ing tax in­for­ma­tion. In the 2020 Par­lia­ment de­bate then-At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said that in 2010, be­cause of T&T’s In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cen­tre and since T&T’s econ­o­my runs with over US$ 5 bil­lion, the GF in­clud­ed T&T among re­cip­i­ents to com­plete a ques­tion­naire and from a 2014 mark­er T&T had to en­ter tax in­for­ma­tion ex­change agree­ments with 13 coun­tries.

Blam­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment for fail­ure on this, Al-Rawi said in Oc­to­ber 2015 af­ter the PNM en­tered of­fice the GF asked where were the agree­ments. T&T was sub­se­quent­ly black­list­ed among “non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions.”

Af­ter law/sys­tem up­grades, last No­vem­ber Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert signed a treaty geared to re­move T&T from the black­list. Im­bert said this coun­try crossed the thresh­old and sign­ing was a “huge step” to re­move T&T. Ef­forts were made to demon­strate the coun­try’s progress to have it shift­ed from the EU’s black­list to a grey list.