Rose­marie Sant

Rose­marie Sant&nb­sp;Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar plans to write to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ask­ing him to re­con­sid­er his Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on the re­quest for the For­eign Ac­counts Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA) Leg­is­la­tion to be sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC).

In an in­ter­view on Akaash Vani 106.5 FM, sis­ter sta­tion of the T&T Guardian, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing a "roller-coast­er ap­proach" to the leg­is­la­tion. She said through Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert they had agreed to the sug­ges­tion that the bill be sent to a JSC, but sub­se­quent­ly re­neged on that com­mit­ment.

"Why are they so afraid of JSC, which is a tool utilised by Par­lia­ments around the world, and this Par­lia­ment?" she asked.

Per­sad-Bissses­sar said the leg­is­la­tion needs to go to a JSC be­cause it is com­plex and in­fringes on peo­ple's rights.

"Our Con­sti­tu­tion, which is the bedrock of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety ... our Con­sti­tu­tion framers made sure that cer­tain leg­is­la­tion re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. You must pause for a cause and look at this leg­is­la­tion where rights are be­ing breached," she said.

"Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica have IGAs but have not gone the route of breach­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Why are we go­ing this route?"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment is not of­fered an ex­pla­na­tion as to why it does not want a JSC. She is of the view, giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in the Unit­ed States, that "we should have the ben­e­fit of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee which gives us a wider ar­ray of opin­ions and greater ex­per­tise."

The FAT­CA bill re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage. Since Gov­ern­ment con­trols 23 of the 42 seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the sup­port of at least three op­po­si­tion MPs is re­quired for the leg­is­la­tion to pass.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the PNM claims they sup­port­ed leg­is­la­tion re­quir­ing a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty when they were in Op­po­si­tion but the ap­proach of her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion was dif­fer­ent.

"We tried to pass good law which re­sult­ed in the then Op­po­si­tion giv­ing its sup­port," she said.

Asked how the im­passe could be re­solved, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said ahead of the Par­lia­ment sit­ting on Jan­u­ary 6, she plans to write to the Prime Min­is­ter ask­ing him to re­con­sid­er his Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion.

"I would not want to think the Gov­ern­ment would be so reck­less, giv­en their in­sis­tence on the im­por­tance of this leg­is­la­tion," she said.

Asked why the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment did not haver the Bill fi­nal­ized dur­ing its term in of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­plained: "We start­ed the process by ini­tialling the IGA in June 2014."

But she said her gov­ern­ment could not bring leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment un­til the agree­ment was signed, which took place un­der the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment.

"We had a six-month win­dow to bring the bill to Par­lia­ment giv­en the pro­rogu­ing of Par­lia­ment in June 2015," she said.

On the last oc­ca­sion that the FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion was be­fore Par­lia­ment, the Op­po­si­tion Leader was put out of the Cham­ber by House Speak­er Brid­get An­nisette-George and mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion left the sit­ting in sup­port of their leader. Im­bert then wound up the de­bate and the leg­is­la­tion went to the com­mit­tee stage.

UNC of­fi­cials told the T&T Guardian they have been meet­ing to dis­cuss amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment and will be ready with a po­si­tion this week.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been lob­by­ing the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to pass the leg­is­la­tion. There are con­cerns that if it is not passed by the Feb­ru­ary dead­line T&T's fi­nan­cial sec­tor and even av­er­age cit­i­zens could be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.

About FAT­CA

FAT­CA, the brain­child of out­go­ing US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, was in­tro­duced to help the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) track down sus­pect­ed tax cheats with se­cret mon­ey and in­vest­ments hid­den in over­seas banks.

Since the law was in­tro­duced in 2014, the IRS has con­fis­cat­ed US$10 bil­lion from near­ly 100,000 US tax­pay­ers. Thou­sands of oth­er tax­pay­ers have rushed to file late tax re­turns or amend fil­ings to avoid falling foul of fines and in­ter­est penal­ties.

How­ev­er, ex­pats, led by the lob­by group Re­pub­li­cans Abroad, claim the law is un­fair and breach­es the right to pri­va­cy giv­en un­der the US Con­sti­tu­tion. The group is op­ti­mistic that with a Re­pub­li­can Pres­i­dent com­ing in­to the White House this month the leg­is­la­tion will be re­pealed.

Al­though Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump has not com­ment­ed on his po­si­tion on FAT­CA, the Re­pub­li­can plat­form had called for the re­peal of the law and for the IRS to levy tax­es based on res­i­den­cy. The Re­pub­li­cans say FAT­CA not on­ly al­lows un­rea­son­able search and seizures but al­so threat­ens the abil­i­ty of over­seas Amer­i­cans to lead nor­mal lives.