Rose­marie Sant

Par­lia­ment's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the For­eign Ac­counts Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) has now ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion for writ­ten com­ments from the pub­lic on the leg­is­la­tion.

An ad to this ef­fect was placed in the news­pa­pers yes­ter­day and an of­fi­cial re­lease con­firm­ing the in­vi­ta­tion for writ­ten com­ments was sent to the me­dia by the Par­lia­ment.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi told the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day that the re­port of the JSC will be brought to Par­lia­ment on Fri­day when "all will be re­vealed."

Mem­bers of the JSC who spoke with the T&T Guardian say the re­port has to be signed by all mem­bers and up to 3.45 pm yes­ter­day they had re­ceived noth­ing.

The T&T Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly yes­ter­day that the bill now be­fore the JSC would have been put out for pub­lic com­ment.

FAT­CA is list­ed on the Par­lia­ment's web­site as the Tax In­for­ma­tion Ex­change Agree­ment Bill, 2016.

The pur­pose of the Bill is to pro­vide for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of agree­ments be­tween T&T and oth­er States, for the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion for the pur­pos­es of tax­a­tion and to val­i­date the shar­ing of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion held by the Board of In­land Rev­enue or fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The JSC is invit­ing all stake­hold­ers and in­ter­est­ed per­sons to sub­mit writ­ten com­ments, sug­ges­tions, and rec­om­men­da­tions, re­lat­ed to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Bill by Feb­ru­ary 10.