Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has again ex­tend­ed the dead­line for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the long-tout­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA). 

State at­tor­neys made the dis­clo­sure yes­ter­day in cor­re­spon­dence sent to the Court of Ap­peal in re­la­tion to a pend­ing ap­peal from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), over the dis­missal of its law­suit re­gard­ing the move to re­place the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) with the TTRA. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, state at­tor­ney Svet­lana Dass, on be­half of the Chief State So­lic­i­tor, an­nounced that Im­bert had de­cid­ed to ex­tend the dead­line, which was ini­tial­ly set as Au­gust be­fore be­ing de­ferred to De­cem­ber 1, to March 1. 

Dass stat­ed that the de­ci­sion, which was made for “op­er­a­tional rea­sons”, would be for­malised in an of­fi­cial or­der to be is­sued to­day. 

The de­ci­sion means that the PSA would no longer have to pur­sue an in­ter­im in­junc­tion pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­peal. 

In the law­suit, the PSA, through its mem­ber and cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­risa Dho­ray, is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Act 2021. 

She con­tend­ed that cer­tain seg­ments of the leg­is­la­tion are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as they seek to in­ter­fere with the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of pub­lic ser­vants cur­rent­ly as­signed to the CED and IRD. 

She al­so claimed that the Gov­ern­ment did not have the pow­er to del­e­gate its tax rev­enue col­lec­tion du­ties. 

The law­suit specif­i­cal­ly fo­cused on Sec­tion 18 of the leg­is­la­tion which was pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on April 24.

The sec­tion gives pub­lic ser­vants three months to make a de­ci­sion on their fu­ture em­ploy­ment up­on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the TTRA. 

Af­fect­ed pub­lic ser­vants have the choice to vol­un­tar­i­ly re­sign from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ac­cept a trans­fer to the TTRA, or be trans­ferred to an­oth­er of­fice in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. 

In its de­fence, the Gov­ern­ment has claimed that tax col­lec­tion could be del­e­gat­ed once guide­lines are pro­vid­ed by Par­lia­ment. 

On No­vem­ber 17, the case was dis­missed by High Court Judge West­min James. 

Jus­tice James ruled that tax col­lec­tion is not a core gov­ern­men­tal func­tion that is non-del­e­gable. 

While he not­ed that tax­a­tion is a key source of a gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue and that the process of as­sess­ing and col­lect­ing tax­es is es­sen­tial, he not­ed that there were cur­rent­ly in­stances of pri­vate en­ti­ties be­ing able to col­lect tax­es on the gov­ern­ment’s be­half. 

He al­so point­ed out that sev­er­al for­eign coun­tries have set up sim­i­lar spe­cial­ist bod­ies to deal with the “com­plex­i­ties” of mod­ern tax­a­tion. 

Jus­tice James al­so ruled that the del­e­ga­tion of the as­sess­ment and col­lec­tion of tax­es to a state cor­po­ra­tion un­der the con­trol of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was per­mit­ted as en­force­ment du­ties of the TTRA would still be per­formed by pub­lic ser­vants, who are not un­der the di­rect con­trol of the min­is­ter or the TTRA board. 

In the ap­peal, the PSA has iden­ti­fied ten grounds on which it claims Jus­tice James erred in com­ing to his de­ci­sion.