KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment suc­ceed­ed in get­ting the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Bill, 2018 passed in the Up­per House yes­ter­day with sup­port from the In­de­pen­dent bench.

Around 2.30 pm, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo read out the di­vi­sion of 26-6 in favour of the pas­sage. The Bill will now go to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for de­bate.

The bill seeks to es­tab­lish the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), an au­tonomous rev­enue col­lec­tion body to re­place and ab­sorb the pri­ma­ry func­tions of the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED).

In pre­sent­ing the bill in May 2018, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the TTRA will en­hance pub­lic rev­enue, re­sult­ing in high­er tax ra­tios and rev­enue growth while re­duc­ing tax eva­sion.

In her con­tri­bu­tion yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Allyson West re­it­er­at­ed In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Patrick Viera’s state­ment that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic showed how much peo­ple de­pend on the State.

Viera said it was more im­por­tant now that an ef­fi­cient tax col­lec­tion sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed.

West took a jab at those cit­i­zens who boast of their in­de­pen­dence from the State and who claim that they do not ben­e­fit from tax col­lec­tion.

“Every mem­ber of so­ci­ety in some form or fash­ion is step­ping for­ward to the Gov­ern­ment and say­ing, ‘you need to pro­vide this for me. You need to not on­ly to let me go back out to work, but I can­not pay my em­ploy­ees while they are home be­cause I am earn­ing no in­come. I can’t pay my rent, my in­ter­est pay­ments are too high, I need re­lief to en­sure that my busi­ness con­tin­ues, I need tax re­lief, I need more di­rect re­lief.

“The gov­ern­ment is work­ing on all of these things. But the gov­ern­ment can­not pro­vide that sup­port to all mem­bers of so­ci­ety when the gov­ern­ment it­self is out of funds.”

She con­tin­ued: “Don’t you think it un­fair to say to peo­ple who have been work­ing and pay­ing their tax­es all of these decades that we are tak­ing this lit­tle bit of mon­ey and we can on­ly give you $1,500? Be­cause we don’t on­ly have to take care of you, but we have to take care of the mass­es of peo­ple who have not been con­tribut­ing to the cof­fers over the years.” 

The bill got through the com­mit­tee stage with­out amend­ments, but there were re­quests for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Clause 18 (2) of the bill stat­ed that pub­lic of­fi­cers em­ployed with the BIR or CED can ei­ther vol­un­tar­i­ly re­tire from the Pub­lic Ser­vice on terms and con­di­tions ne­go­ti­at­ed with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), trans­fer to the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty or re­main in the Pub­lic Ser­vice but in a dif­fer­ent of­fice that is on par with his or her pre­vi­ous func­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine ques­tioned how em­ploy­ees would be treat­ed if an agree­ment with the CPO is not reached. In re­sponse, West said the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment got in­struc­tions to iden­ti­fy the var­i­ous po­si­tions that are line with the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence of those em­ploy­ees who chose to re­main in the pub­lic ser­vice.

She said train­ing for the new po­si­tions in the pro­posed TTRA has not start­ed in the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion. But in map­ping out the op­er­a­tions, the Min­istry found that more peo­ple will be re­quired than what cur­rent­ly ex­ists in the BIR and CED. She said the TTRA re­quired man­pow­er was around 2000. 

West recog­nised that one of the ob­jec­tions to the bill was the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s pow­er to ap­point the TTRA’s board of di­rec­tors.

She said the board’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to for­mu­late and im­ple­ment man­age­ment poli­cies. It would not be in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of tax col­lec­tion, there­fore not ex­pos­ing tax­pay­ers and staff to those mem­bers.

She said there should be no prob­lems in al­low­ing the min­is­ter to ap­point a board for this pur­pose. 

She added that this sys­tem would al­low the of­fi­cer-in-charge of tax ad­min­is­tra­tion to fo­cus on that role. Cur­rent­ly, the chair­man of the BIR and Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms has to deal with, re­mu­ner­a­tion, staff and main­te­nance mat­ters, which West be­lieves takes away from the time spent on the tech­ni­cal as­pects of their jobs.

“We need some­body com­plete­ly fo­cused on the col­lec­tion of tax­es, pro­tec­tion of the bor­ders and col­lec­tion of du­ties and ex­cise. We are di­vid­ing the pow­ers be­tween tech­ni­cal, which has to do with the col­lec­tion of tax­es and ad­min­is­tra­tion, which the board will han­dle.

“It is on­ly when we do that, we can have peo­ple prop­er­ly fo­cused on what they are re­quired to do, there­fore, bet­ter able to do those jobs.”

She said the leg­is­la­tion pre­vents the min­is­ter and the Board from get­ting in­volved in the TTRA’s op­er­a­tion.
Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, the min­is­ter would al­so ap­point the di­rec­tor-gen­er­al, who will over­see tax col­lec­tion.

How­ev­er, West said that a clause was added to al­low for that ap­point­ment to be sub­ject­ed to af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion of the Par­lia­ment, which is the same process for ap­point­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. 

The Sen­ate was ad­journed to May 5 when the gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to deal with Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Bill, 2020 and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing) Amend­ment Bill of 2020.