Nadaleen Singh

Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) yes­ter­day called on gov­ern­ment to bring leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment gov­ern­ing the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) so T&T can meet the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

FAT­CA be­came law in the US in March 2010 and since then the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) said it had been very vo­cal on the is­sue. The law was put in­to place to en­sure that US cit­i­zens, green-card hold­ers as well as non-res­i­dent cit­i­zens file their tax­es.

In a state­ment, the group called for the "time­ly en­act­ment" of leg­is­la­tion so that lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions can be guid­ed by it. Adding that giv­en the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line for the leg­is­la­tion to be im­ple­ment­ed, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert should ad­dress the is­sue.

"The US is still a ma­jor trad­ing part­ner of T&T and non-com­pli­ance by the stip­u­lat­ed dead­line could pose a ma­jor chal­lenge for op­er­a­tions with­in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, grave­ly im­pact­ing our abil­i­ty to do busi­ness."

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site of the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vices, the law fo­cus­es on re­port­ing "by US tax­pay­ers about cer­tain for­eign fi­nan­cial ac­counts and off­shore as­sets, as well as by for­eign fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions about fi­nan­cial ac­counts held by US tax­pay­ers or for­eign en­ti­ties in which US tax­pay­ers hold a sub­stan­tial own­er­ship in­ter­est."

In late June, the lead­ers of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Sco­tia­bank, RBC, JMMB Bank Ltd called for the leg­is­la­tion to be tak­en to the Par­lia­ment, the Mod­el 1A In­ter-Gov­ern­men­tal Agree­ment (IGA) to be signed and the sys­tem for col­lect­ing da­ta at the Board of In­land Rev­enue put in place.

Frus­trat­ed that T&T was not yet com­pli­ant, the bankers called a news con­fer­ence to high­light the im­pli­ca­tions for T&T if the coun­try was non-com­pli­ant. The bankers had said they had been lob­by­ing for T&T to be com­pli­ant for sev­er­al years span­ning two ad­min­is­tra­tions and it was now crit­i­cal for the mea­sures to be put in place.

Im­bert, in a state­ment to the T&T Guardian, had sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to meet with the Op­po­si­tion about the leg­is­la­tion since it re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in or­der for the leg­is­la­tion to pass in the Par­lia­ment.

One of the im­pli­ca­tions for be­ing non-com­pli­ant is that a with­hold­ing tax of 30 per cent can be im­ple­ment­ed on the US dol­lars flow­ing in­to T&T's bank­ing sys­tem from the US.

Com­ment­ing on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the tax, Am­Cham said there were com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing the tax in­clud­ing the "le­gal­i­ty of the with­hold­ing pro­vi­sions giv­en the ac­count hold­er's con­trac­tu­al rights, de­mand­ing cus­tomers to give up their pri­va­cy rights or clos­ing their ac­counts and per­ceived con­flict with the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act."

Over­all, Am­Cham said there were more ques­tions than an­swers con­cern­ing the FAT­CA law specif­i­cal­ly the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples, breadth of scope and the im­pli­ca­tions of FAT­CA. But it called for the ref­or­ma­tion of the Board of In­land Rev­enue, which it said "would al­low for greater ef­fi­cien­cy of tax col­lec­tion. Ac­tion to­wards its ef­fi­cien­cy is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent if we are to en­force the oblig­a­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the IGA."