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TTMA: Not enough done to address VAT returns

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#meta[ag-author]
Geisha Kowlessar-Alonzo
20191007200832
20191007

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says not enough ef­fort was made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to ad­dress ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6 bil­lion owed in VAT re­turns.

Re­act­ing to the 2020 bud­get, the TTMA ac­knowl­edged what it termed the Gov­ern­ment’s “ in­ge­nu­ity” in its at­tempt to ad­dress the VAT is­sue by propos­ing an ini­tial $3 bil­lion in­ter­est bear­ing bond fa­cil­i­ty, but felt not enough was done.

“We re­gret it is not enough to off­set the cost of do­ing busi­ness. SMEs stand to be most hard hit by this and we are con­cerned about their sur­viv­abil­i­ty in the near to medi­um term. In this re­gard, we will con­tin­ue to lob­by for a VAT net fa­cil­i­ta­tion for our mem­ber­ship and in par­tic­u­lar the en­tre­pre­neurs who need a dif­fer­ent so­lu­tion from what has been pro­posed,”the TTMA said in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day.

It said one con­cern re­mains the cost of trans­fer­ring or trad­ing the bonds to po­ten­tial buy­ers.

The TTMA not­ed that the ex­ist­ing hous­ing bond of 4.5 per cent is more at­trac­tive to po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, adding that it would have been ide­al if pri­or­i­ty treat­ment could have been giv­en to this VAT bond fa­cil­i­ty.

The TTMA how­ev­er, ap­plaud­ed Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tive of the ex­ten­sion of the pro­mo­tion­al al­lowance for CARI­COM for first time ex­porters which will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the SME sec­tor whose main ex­port mar­ket is CARI­COM.

“The ex­ist­ing ‘Pro­mo­tion­al Ex­pens­es Al­lowance’ al­lows for a max­i­mum of 150 per cent of the amount ac­tu­al­ly ex­pend­ed for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing or pro­mot­ing the ex­pan­sion of for­eign mar­kets for the ex­ports of cer­tain goods and ser­vices,’ the TTMA added.

The group said it was heart­ened by the ini­tia­tives of Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, for ex­am­ple the in­tro­duc­tion of the LED bulbs, the in­cen­tive on so­lar wa­ter heaters and the use of “en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly un­friend­ly” pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als.

“While this ini­tia­tive is com­mend­able, we must con­sid­er the im­pli­ca­tions for those that are cur­rent­ly in the sec­tor and there­fore we pro­pose a frame­work to buffer those stake­hold­ers in the short­est time frame pos­si­ble.

“It is com­mend­able that the gov­ern­ment sought to ad­dress leg­isla­tive gaps to cre­ate a more en­abling en­vi­ron­ment,’ the TTMA ad­vised.

It said pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and ad­dress­ing the li­cens­ing frame­work are all wel­comed mea­sures that can have re­dound­ing ben­e­fit to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and by ex­ten­sion the pop­u­la­tion.

“How­ev­er, we note that these pro­posed amend­ments to the ex­ist­ing frame­works have been spo­ken to in the past with­out ex­e­cu­tion in a time­ly man­ner. In this re­gard, the TTMA looks for­ward to speedy im­ple­men­ta­tion of these mea­sures,” it added.

The TTMA al­so said it is heart­ened that Gov­ern­ment has re­alised that the way to raise rev­enues is not by plac­ing more bur­den on the al­ready tax pay­ing com­pli­ant busi­ness sec­tor and pub­lic but rather seek­ing to cap­ture those that are evad­ing the tax net.

“In this re­gard we wel­come ini­tia­tives to build com­pe­ten­cies in col­lec­tion mech­a­nism and com­mend the gov­ern­ment on its col­lec­tion of $2.382 bil­lion from the 2019 tax amnesty,” the TTMA not­ed.


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