Pe­ter D Nep­tune

There will be no ser­vice in­ter­rup­tion for both the Board of In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise De­part­ment when the new T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) takes over the col­lec­tion of tax­es on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2010, says An­dre Vin­cent Hen­ry, chair­man, TTRA Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny. "I am look­ing for the tran­si­tion to be smooth in Sep­tem­ber 1 when the new fi­nan­cial year starts," he said. Hen­ry said the man­age­ment team is work­ing hard and mak­ing good progress on deal­ing with em­ploy­ee is­sues, de­vel­op­ing pro­pos­als vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion of em­ploy­ment and es­tab­lish­ing the new up­dat­ed sys­tems that will form the core func­tions of the TTRA.

Hen­ry said sev­er­al jobs may be dif­fer­ent as the man­age­ment com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pate more au­toma­tion of the tax col­lec­tion process. "The fo­cus will be on new tech­nol­o­gy for the Cus­toms rev­enue col­lec­tion and in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing as­pects of the process. This in­cludes ac­quir­ing the lat­est ASY­CU­DA sys­tem for the col­lec­tion and track­ing of Cus­toms in­for­ma­tion and tax rat­ing pro­ce­dures. "This up­date will fa­cil­i­tate faster clear­ance at the ports, more ef­fi­cient and pre­dictable es­ti­ma­tions for tax pur­pos­es, and the au­to­mat­ed rat­ing and clas­si­fi­ca­tion of tax­able items.

Min­imis­ing fraud

"For the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and VAT of­fices, we will be in­tro­duc­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ments to make the sys­tem more ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic as well as eas­i­er reg­is­tra­tion to fa­cil­i­tate on­line pay­ments in due course. "We are ac­quir­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, and cre­at­ing the sys­tems, con­trols and over­sight en­vi­ron­ment to min­imise fraud, cor­rup­tion and pre­vent in­ap­pro­pri­ate ac­cess to tax­pay­er in­for­ma­tion," Hen­ry said. He said all the as­sets of the BIR and Cus­toms will be vest­ed to the new TTRA on Sep­tem­ber 1, and like any oth­er arm of the Gov­ern­ment, will be giv­en fund­ing for their op­er­a­tions.

"Any mon­ey col­lect­ed by the TTRA will be de­posit­ed di­rect­ly in­to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment's con­sol­i­dat­ed fund. And, like any oth­er de­part­ment in the Pub­lic Ser­vice, we will have to sub­mit our bud­gets and es­ti­mates to cen­tral gov­ern­ment for ap­proval and fund­ing. "None of the mon­ey we col­lect will be avail­able for us to use. Our job will be to col­lect rev­enues, and we are putting the sys­tems in place to make this more ef­fi­cient and eas­i­er for the pub­lic to ac­cess and to com­ply."

Com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage

He said the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTRA will be a key fac­tor in repo­si­tion­ing T&T to be the most com­pet­i­tive place to do busi­ness in Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean. Hen­ry said he wants T&T's pub­lic sec­tor to be a leader in the re­gion, by im­prov­ing the per­for­mance of the State's rev­enue col­lect­ing agen­cies. "We are look­ing to make the TTRA a mod­el for break­ing down bar­ri­ers for busi­ness and fa­cil­i­tat­ing growth. "This is the on­ly way for us to im­prove our com­pet­i­tive­ness on the glob­al stage. What we are do­ing is cre­at­ing the frame­work for ap­ply­ing tech­nol­o­gy, adopt­ing a new busi­ness cul­ture and re­fo­cus our ef­forts at sat­is­fy­ing the needs of the pub­lic– our biggest and on­ly cus­tomer," he said.

He said the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty struc­ture would make it eas­i­er for the agency to adapt to change and adopt tech­nol­o­gy and be­come more flex­i­ble to the chang­ing needs, lifestyles and de­mands of cit­i­zens.

"We will be bring­ing the agency to the peo­ple by mak­ing it eas­i­er to pay their tax­es in many more lo­ca­tions than be­fore. The cur­rent leg­is­la­tion and sys­tems lim­its how and where the rev­enues can be col­lect­ed. "Many times peo­ple don't pay their lo­cal and oth­er di­rect tax­es be­cause the lines are too long, or the process in­volved in pay­ing is too cum­ber­some.

In­ter­net pay­ments

"We will be up­grad­ing the data­base and up­dat­ing the sys­tems for ac­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion, so you will soon be able to pay tax­es elec­tron­i­cal­ly, on the In­ter­net, at the bank or oth­er com­mer­cial places, so tax­pay­ers will not have to face the long lines that turn off so many peo­ple. "With the free­dom to more ef­fec­tive­ly, plan and in­vest in main­tain­ing and up­grad­ing the sys­tems, we will be able to widen the net of tax­pay­ers and ex­pand the val­ue of tax­es raised every year." Hen­ry said an ini­tial in­vest­ment will be made to up­grade the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem at Cus­toms, in­crease in­vest more in­to train­ing, adopt new tech­nol­o­gy for pay­ments and track­ing and im­prove the de­part­ment's turn­around and pro­cess­ing time.

"Our ob­jec­tive is to bring the rev­enue col­lec­tion agen­cies in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry be­cause we re­alise that be­cause the gov­ern­ment's reach is in­to so many cor­ners of the econ­o­my and the way we live, that we have to im­prove on this first if we want the rest of the econ­o­my to fall in­to place. "If we are able to re­duce the turn­around for VAT re­turn pay­ments to just a few days, or even im­me­di­ate­ly for spe­cial cir­cum­stances, then we would have gone a long way to­wards achiev­ing our ob­jec­tives. "When we are ef­fi­cient, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can be more ef­fi­cient be­cause they can be more re­spon­sive to the needs of their clients and have more of their mon­ey avail­able to fund their op­er­a­tions.

"This al­so re­duces costs and adds to a cy­cle of eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness that adds to growth and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

"The same thing is true for Cus­toms. When they are able to speed up the turn­around and pro­cess­ing of items on the ports from eight days to two weeks to clear a con­tain­er to com­plet­ing a clear­ance in just a few hours, we all win and be­come more com­pet­i­tive." "With the cur­rent sys­tem, this can­not be done, and we are look­ing ac­tive­ly at putting the sys­tems in place to pull away and take the lead in the re­gion as the place for do­ing busi­ness. "We can­not ex­pect the world to take us se­ri­ous­ly as the place for do­ing busi­ness in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca by con­sis­tent­ly get­ting low­er scores on the Glob­al Busi­ness In­dex than oth­er ter­ri­to­ries across the re­gion. That does not ex­press the goals and am­bi­tions that we want to achieve."

At­tract­ing in­vestors' at­ten­tion

Hen­ry said T&T can­not get in­vestors' at­ten­tion if do­ing busi­ness here is a cum­ber­some and time-con­sum­ing ex­er­cise. "This will form the frame­work for our new thrust to im­press in­vestors and fund man­agers from across the globe that we are mak­ing a se­ri­ous bid for their busi­ness. "We want to re­struc­ture the staff and the work flow to bring tech­nol­o­gy to bear on­to the process and es­tab­lish a sys­tem and cor­po­rate struc­ture that is more ef­fi­cient and takes in­to ac­count the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence of the staff.

"In the old sys­tem, you are em­ployed by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, and you are pro­mot­ed ac­cord­ing to a sys­tem that recog­nis­es length of ser­vice. This needs to be changed to one that fo­cus­es on qual­i­fi­ca­tion, per­for­mance and mer­it. "We will al­so be free to be­come more com­pet­i­tive in terms of recog­nis­ing the cost of hu­man re­source and the spe­cial skills that the TTRA would ac­quire so some­one will see the TTRA as a pre­ferred place to work and to de­vel­op your ca­reer as a pro­fes­sion­al," he added.