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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

ICATT: International standards need to become law

by

Geisha Alonzo
2353 days ago
20181127
Esther Le Gendre

Esther Le Gendre

Shirley Bahadur

The Coun­cil of the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of T&T (ICATT) is hop­ing pub­lic leg­is­la­tion will soon come on stream cov­er­ing a wider range of rules and reg­u­la­tions. This will en­able greater trans­paren­cy, es­pe­cial­ly as T&T strug­gles to im­prove its cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion rank­ing, the group said.

ICATT is the body that rep­re­sents the coun­try’s tax pro­fes­sion­als and is a ma­jor stake­hold­er in tax ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The coun­cil recog­nis­es the lim­i­ta­tions of the leg­is­la­tion un­der which we cur­rent­ly op­er­ate. That is the pri­vate leg­is­la­tion and its lim­i­ta­tions.

“We are pre­pared to look at the next step, which is per­haps pub­lic leg­is­la­tion, which will throw a wider net in terms of reg­u­la­tions,” ICATT CEO Es­ther Le Gen­dre ex­plained.

She said the ICATT coun­cil im­ple­ment­ed new rules and reg­u­la­tions from Jan­u­ary 1 which en­tailed com­pre­hen­sive ini­tia­tives to com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments.

“These new rules pro­mote trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty and im­prove ICATT’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late and dis­ci­pline mem­bers. Over­all, the change is al­so im­por­tant for the pub­lic as it mir­rors high-qual­i­ty, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice,” Le Gen­dre said.

She said the coun­cil has start­ed to ex­am­ine how leg­is­la­tion can be strength­ened as re­lates to its role as reg­u­la­tor of the ac­coun­tan­cy pro­fes­sion. One de­sired out­come of that change will be to bring the op­er­a­tions of all ac­coun­tants un­der ICATT’s purview.

“The ex­ist­ing pri­vate mem­ber leg­is­la­tion un­der which ICATT cur­rent­ly op­er­ates means mem­bers vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­mit to the reg­u­la­tions of the In­sti­tute. This has been out­paced by the chal­lenges fac­ing the in­dus­try both lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.

“Pub­lic leg­is­la­tion that al­ready gov­erns the ma­jor pro­fes­sion­al group­ings—the le­gal and med­ical pro­fes­sions, for ex­am­ple—are pos­si­ble ex­am­ples to em­u­late, so if we do have pub­lic leg­is­la­tion it’s not go­ing to be a unique po­si­tion but we will prob­a­bly be the last of the ma­jor pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies to be so cov­ered,” she said.

How­ev­er, it’s sole­ly up to Gov­ern­ment to in­sti­tute pub­lic leg­is­la­tion. ICATT can on­ly rec­om­mend.

Stronger pub­lic leg­is­la­tion can help the reg­u­la­tor to en­force rules and reg­u­la­tions, cre­ate greater trans­paren­cy and sup­port the ef­forts of Gov­ern­ment, oth­er reg­u­la­tors and pri­vate stake­hold­ers. It can man­age and aid in an­ti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing, com­bat fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism, pre­ven­tion of cre­ative ac­count­ing and fraud con­trol.

Cre­ative ac­count­ing is the ex­ploita­tion of loop­holes in fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion to gain an ad­van­tage or present fig­ures in a mis­lead­ing­ly favourable light.

Among the ma­jor changes is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of just who is con­sid­ered to be an ac­coun­tant in pub­lic prac­tice. The up­dat­ed de­f­i­n­i­tion is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly aligned and the reg­u­la­to­ry net of the in­sti­tute has been widened.

In ad­di­tion, the process­es and pro­ce­dures for the li­cens­ing of mem­bers to prac­tice have been strength­ened.

ICATT, like any oth­er fi­nan­cial en­ti­ty, has had its fair share of mem­bers en­gag­ing in un­to­ward ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial fraud. Whether this fig­ure is wor­ry­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Le Gen­dre de­scribed it as “reg­u­lar” but the or­gan­i­sa­tion has a rig­or­ous sys­tem in place to deal with such mat­ters. We do have re­ports of in­dis­cre­tion in­volv­ing mem­bers and we look at those but this fig­ure is no dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­er ma­jor pro­fes­sions.

“If there are com­plaints these go through a process where they reach our dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee. If that com­mit­tee finds there’s a pri­ma fa­cie case made out the mem­ber is heard. If there’s a find­ing one way or the oth­er the mem­ber does have the right of ap­peal,” Le Gen­dre said.

The 47-year-old ac­count­ing body is al­so an NGO sup­port­ed fi­nan­cial­ly on­ly by mem­bers’ dues and sur­plus­es from mem­ber events such as the an­nu­al fi­nance and ac­count­ing con­fer­ence.

“So there’s a clear chal­lenge as well to meet mem­bers’ ex­pec­ta­tions of a mod­ern mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tion and con­tin­u­ous­ly re­main up-to-date with tech­nol­o­gy to fa­cil­i­tate con­tin­u­ous learn­ing and busi­ness sup­port,” Le Gen­dre ex­plained.

The in­dus­try is not ex­empt­ed from oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing the need to al­ways keep abreast with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and trends. In this vein, Le Gen­dre not­ed that the ICATT is look­ing at en­hanc­ing and grow­ing pro­fes­sion­al skills.

She said: “Our ac­coun­tants and au­di­tors are all cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­als but post qual­i­fi­ca­tion there’s a lot to do to keep our mem­bers abreast of the changes and there are many and fre­quent changes to in­ter­na­tion­al re­port­ing stan­dards.

“The chal­lenge has been to cre­ate a more lev­el play­ing field for those in­volved in the work of ac­count­ing.” L

Luck­i­ly, ICATT hasn’t ex­pe­ri­enced a brain drain as has been the case in oth­er pro­fes­sion­al sec­tors.

“All good ac­coun­tants have work and there are a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties. There are more than 300 ac­coun­tants who come from AC­CA (As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants) an­nu­al­ly and those flow in­to the larg­er and small­er firms and in­to the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.

“The fact that we have a good num­ber of stu­dents has re­al­ly caused ICATT to look at Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­ten­tial for BPO (busi­ness process out­sourc­ing) op­er­a­tions based on the very rich num­bers we have of qual­i­fied per­sons in the ac­count­ing field,” Le Gen­dre not­ed.

BPO is the con­tract­ing of non-pri­ma­ry busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties and func­tions to a third-par­ty provider. Ser­vices in­clude pay­roll, hu­man re­sources, ac­count­ing and cus­tomer/call cen­tre re­la­tions. BPO is al­so known as in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy en­abled ser­vices (ITES).

En­rich­ing job

Le Gen­dre has held the po­si­tion of ICATT CEO for the past four years. It’s a post she de­scribes as chal­leng­ing yet re­ward­ing.

“If a job is not chal­leng­ing it’s prob­a­bly not worth do­ing if you are in­ter­est­ed in pro­fes­sion­al growth and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment. I lead a small sec­re­tari­at which ser­vices a coun­cil and sev­er­al sub-com­mit­tees of the coun­cil.

“All mem­bers are pro­fes­sion­als em­ployed else­where in the ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing in­dus­try and so there is a fair de­gree of re­liance on the sec­re­tari­at for im­ple­men­ta­tion and op­er­a­tion,” she said.

About ICATT

ICATT was es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 1970. Its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude train­ing, de­vel­op­ment, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the ac­count­ing pro­fes­sion through ed­u­ca­tion, and lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment on mat­ters of na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion cur­rent­ly has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 ac­tive mem­bers who op­er­ate in all sec­tors of the econ­o­my and Gov­ern­ment. It ad­heres to the eth­i­cal code of in­tegri­ty, ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour.

ICATT’s in­ter­na­tion­al af­fil­i­ates in­clude the As­so­ci­a­tion of Cer­ti­fied Char­tered Ac­coun­tants, Char­tered Pro­fes­sion­al Ac­coun­tants Cana­da, In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants in Eng­land and Wales, Amer­i­can In­sti­tute of CPAs, and the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of the Caribbean.

It al­so main­tains strate­gic re­la­tions with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing state reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) and lo­cal trade as­so­ci­a­tions.

ICATT is a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Ac­coun­tants and T&T was one of the first coun­tries to ful­ly adopt In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dards (IFRS), for­mer­ly In­ter­na­tion­al Ac­count­ing Stan­dards, as well as the more re­cent­ly adopt­ed IFRS for SMEs in 2010.

It has al­so suc­cess­ful­ly en­gaged in the prac­tice mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tive which is in­tend­ed to serve the in­ter­est of the pub­lic.

The prac­tice mon­i­tor­ing process in­volves vis­it­ing li­censed au­di­tors and firms and re­view­ing their au­dit files to ver­i­fy whether they have com­plied with In­ter­na­tion­al Stan­dards on Au­dit­ing (ISA). It is an im­por­tant com­po­nent of the self-reg­u­la­to­ry func­tions of the ac­coun­tan­cy pro­fes­sion.


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