The Op­po­si­tion isn’t “stick­ing” on the In­come Tax Amend­ment bill.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is ready to work and have it passed in two weeks once Gov­ern­ment re­turns the bill to the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) where amend­ments can be made and al­so deal with two “sis­ter” pieces of leg­is­la­tion Gov­ern­ment had said must be done with that bill.

UNC MPs Fazal Karim, Rod­ney Charles and UNC Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein made this clear at a Port-of-Spain brief­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent ac­cu­sa­tion that the Op­po­si­tion was ob­struct­ing pas­sage of the bill.

“We’re not afraid of any­thing, we want to pass good leg­is­la­tion. We main­tained that with the An­ti-Gang, An­ti-Ter­ror­ism and Fat­ca bills when they blamed us in those is­sues al­so. But those bills were all passed with our sup­port and amend­ments. The sky didn’t fall, why the fuss now?” Karim added.

“.... Es­pe­cial­ly since Gov­ern­ment could have done some­thing about this bill in its three years and on­ly sought at the 11th hour to present it - as usu­al. We even made our­selves avail­able for talks, even dur­ing va­ca­tion.”

The trio was on the JSC which had met on the In­come Tax bill and the two oth­ers - the Dou­ble Tax­a­tion (DT) bill and Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion As­sis­tance in Tax Mat­ters (MAATM) bill - this year. They’re in­ter-re­lat­ed re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­pli­ance with Eu­ro­pean Union busi­ness tax­a­tion codes.

The In­come Tax bill, which fa­cil­i­tates the ex­change of in­come tax in­for­ma­tion with the Eu­ro­pean Union (and Glob­al Fo­rum mem­ber states) re­quires Op­po­si­tion votes for pas­sage. Its cur­rent form in­fringes cer­tain rights and priv­i­leges.

But Karim said that this bill alone won’t pre­vent T&T from be­ing black­list­ed by the EU as a non-com­pli­ant coun­try.

Ho­sein added that while the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al claimed the dead­line to pass the bill is this month, a No­vem­ber 21, 2017 let­ter from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to Fab­rizia Lapecorel­la (Code of Con­duct group chair­man) stat­ed T&T was com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing its de­fi­cien­cies by De­cem­ber 31, 2018. Ho­sein pro­duced Im­bert’s let­ter, which pro­posed time­lines for pass­ing the In­come Tax and DT bills as June 30, 2018 and No­vem­ber 30 for the MAATM bill.

Karim, cit­ing JSC notes, said Im­bert, at a May JSC meet­ing, had said all three bills would be done to­geth­er. How­ev­er, when Par­lia­ment met last Fri­day on­ly the In­come Tax bill was pre­sent­ed, with changes from for­mat dis­cussed in the JSC, Ho­sein added.

Ho­sein said JSC ex­pla­na­tions were that the In­come Tax bill ap­plied on­ly to ex­change of tax in­for­ma­tion to EU states on EU cit­i­zens in T&T and na­tion­als work­ing in EU states. But Gov­ern­ment’s now propos­ing all T&T tax­pay­ers’ in­for­ma­tion would be avail­able to T&T po­lice and the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) - with­out a court or­der. He ques­tioned why Gov­ern­ment was “over­reach­ing” on that.

“If you get a ‘cuss’ case or any mi­nor case, if po­lice wish they can seek your tax­pay­er in­for­ma­tion. It dan­ger­ous­ly ex­pos­es and en­dan­gers cit­i­zens’ in­for­ma­tion which aren’t re­quired by EU.

“The sit­u­a­tion has po­ten­tial for abuse, es­pe­cial­ly when we hear of ‘po­lice pow­er’, look at the al­leged Na­tal­ie Pol­lon­ais is­sue,” Ho­sein said, adding the Op­po­si­tion would seek amend­ment for a court or­der in fur­ther JSC dis­cus­sions

Slam­ming Gov­ern­ment’s “fear-mon­ger­ing,” Ho­sein not­ed that Im­bert’s 2017 let­ter to Lapecol­la stat­ed cer­tain pro­posed claus­es for the In­come Tax bill - but doesn’t state any clause to al­low tax­pay­ers’ in­for­ma­tion to be al­lowed to the po­lice or FIU.

He said the Op­po­si­tion hasn’t pro­posed amend­ments for which fur­ther JSC dis­cus­sions are need­ed. The oth­er rea­son is to en­sure the oth­er two bills are dealt with as Im­bert said they would be. But Ho­sein al­so said JSC meet­ings were too brief and when the JSC’s re­port was done, the Op­po­si­tion of­ten pre­sent­ed a mi­nor­i­ty re­port rec­om­mend­ing con­tin­ued JSC de­lib­er­a­tions.

Charles al­so point­ed out that no stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions were held with any­one - Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (BATT), Board of In­land Rev­enue or the FIU.

On BATT’s call to the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port the bill, he not­ed that BATT had stat­ed ear­li­er that the pack­age of three bills should be dealt with and BATT there­fore knew what needs to be passed for T&T to be com­pli­ant.

“BATT’s on­ly one group, but we must pro­tect every­one’s rights,” Charles said.