RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

As part of its ef­forts to pre­vent tax eva­sion, the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) will es­tab­lish a da­ta an­a­lyt­ics cen­tre. TTRA chair­man Nigel Ed­wards said it is one of the mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed to en­hance rev­enue col­lec­tion and en­sure com­pli­ance with tax laws.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­wards out­lined the TTRA’s ob­jec­tives as it pre­pares to com­mence op­er­a­tions. In a rul­ing on Tues­day, the Court of Ap­peal deemed it con­sti­tu­tion­al for the TTRA to set up op­er­a­tions for tax col­lec­tion. 

Sev­er­al large cor­po­ra­tions have been iden­ti­fied as ow­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) tax­es. Among them is Movi­eTowne which owes $93 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es and penal­ties, while the T&T Ra­dio Net­work, owned by Tony Chow Lin On pop­u­lar­ly known as Chi­nese Laun­dry, owes $34 mil­lion.

Ed­wards said he could not give de­tails on oth­er busi­ness own­ers who might be ow­ing the BIR.

“The TTRA is not in­volved in any tax­pay­er col­lec­tion ini­tia­tives or in­di­vid­ual cas­es and is not able to pro­vide any fur­ther de­tails on this,” he ex­plained. “That re­mains un­der the IRD (In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion) un­til all sec­tions of the TTRA Act are pro­claimed and the TTRA is op­er­a­tionalised.”

He said once the TTRA goes in­to ef­fect, the or­gan­i­sa­tion will stay true to its man­date to be a trust­ed and fair rev­enue ad­min­is­tra­tion that acts with in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy. It will fo­cus on clos­ing the tax gap—the dif­fer­ence be­tween what is col­lect­ed in tax­es and what should be col­lect­ed from all sources.

He added, “We are com­mit­ted to gen­er­at­ing ef­fec­tive trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion through vol­un­tary com­pli­ance, in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions, en­hanced cit­i­zen ex­pe­ri­ence, and an em­pow­ered work­force.”

Ed­wards said a key el­e­ment of the TTRA’s strat­e­gy is to ed­u­cate tax­pay­ers to en­sure com­pli­ance with their oblig­a­tions. 

Giv­ing de­tails of the da­ta an­a­lyt­ics cen­tre, Ed­wards said it will be a sig­nif­i­cant as­pect of the TTRA’s mod­erni­sa­tion ef­forts. It is ex­pect­ed to play a cru­cial role in track­ing and re­duc­ing tax eva­sion, sup­port­ing the TTRA’s broad­er mis­sion of achiev­ing vol­un­tary com­pli­ance and clos­ing the tax gap.

“Op­ti­mis­ing the use of tech­nol­o­gy is key to our strat­e­gy. We are aware of the tech­no­log­i­cal tools avail­able to en­hance our da­ta an­a­lyt­ics ca­pa­bil­i­ties to re­duce ar­eas of non-com­pli­ance,” he not­ed.

Ed­wards added that the TTRA’s ap­proach to tax col­lec­tion is built on prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and trans­paren­cy. 

“This in­cludes the in­clu­sion of an in­de­pen­dent in­ter­nal af­fairs di­vi­sion to en­sure the high­est lev­els of in­ter­nal com­pli­ance with our stan­dards of op­er­a­tion,” he re­vealed.

High­light­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach the or­gan­i­sa­tion will take, he said: “The TTRA will wel­come sup­port from oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies when need­ed to en­sure com­pre­hen­sive and ef­fec­tive tax col­lec­tion. As a se­mi-au­tonomous or­gan­i­sa­tion, the TTRA has the lee­way to seek as­sis­tance from both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate agen­cies.”