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Monday, April 28, 2025

Imbert: FATCA debate after budget

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20160917

De­bate on the For­eign Ac­count Tax­pay­er Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) will re­sume af­ter the Bud­get de­bate is com­plet­ed and a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee is es­tab­lished in the usu­al man­ner to con­sid­er the bill in de­tail, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

He con­firmed this af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of act­ing in bad faith by "clos­ing "the first ses­sion of Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day with­out ho­n­our­ing pub­lic com­mit­ments on the bill.

She said they failed to agree to an Op­po­si­tion pro­pos­al for es­tab­lish­ment of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) to con­sid­er amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion.

"On the floor of the Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day there was no men­tion of this agree­ment, as de­bate on the Bill re­sumed.

"The Par­lia­ment was then abrupt­ly ad­journed sine die, mean­ing that un­less there are ur­gent and un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, the first ses­sion of the 11th Par­lia­ment has come to an end," she said

The first ses­sion pro­rogues Sep­tem­ber 22. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had stressed that the Op­po­si­tion ap­pre­ci­at­ed the im­por­tance of the leg­is­la­tion and T&T's nter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions con­cern­ing FAT­CA and had pledged to vote for it pas­sage but had raised spe­cif­ic con­cerns.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Im­bert said: "It ap­pears that the Op­po­si­tion Leader isn't lis­ten­ing to us. FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion re­quires a three fifth ma­jor­i­ty to be passed, or 26 votes. It there­fore re­quires Op­po­si­tion sup­port, oth­er­wise it can­not be passed. All 23 PNM MPs are ready to vote, but we need at least three UNC MPs to vote for it.

"We made it clear on Mon­day af­ter the meet­ing with the Op­po­si­tion on the Bill that since the Op­po­si­tion had de­mand­ed es­tab­lish­ment of a JSC be­fore it would even be­gin to look at pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion, this wasn't a mat­ter to be rushed through hasti­ly. The Op­po­si­tion re­fused on Mon­day to con­sid­er or dis­cuss any as­pect of the Bill, or vote for it, un­til and un­less we agreed to es­tab­lish a JSC.

"We said on that since the Op­po­si­tion had re­fused to tell us what amend­ments they re­quired to the leg­is­la­tion to make it more ac­cept­able to them, Gov­ern­ment would seek an ex­ten­sion of time from the US Trea­sury to com­ply with FAT­CA, so a JSC could be prop­er­ly es­tab­lished short­ly af­ter the 2017 bud­get de­bate is com­plet­ed, and do its work with­out un­due pres­sure."


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