The news this week that the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) had tak­en de­ci­sive ac­tion to re­cov­er tax­es owed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ra­dio Net­work (TTRN), the par­ent com­pa­ny of ra­dio sta­tions 96.1 We FM, STAR 94.7 and 107.7 Mu­sic for Life, gen­er­at­ed a great deal of dis­cus­sion on the fo­rums of tra­di­tion­al me­dia, so­cial me­dia and in oth­er places where cit­i­zens meet to dis­cuss pub­lic af­fairs is­sues.

The news, which was first re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia, went ‘vi­ral’ be­cause of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of An­tho­ny “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On, who first gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion as a DJ. Mr Chow Lin On even­tu­al­ly branched out to be­come a mu­sic pro­duc­er and own­er of a ra­dio net­work and a quick-ser­vice restau­rant in Port-of-Spain, among oth­er busi­ness­es.

The ini­tial re­port­ing on this mat­ter in­di­cat­ed that Mr Chow Lin On owes the BIR $34 mil­lion, ex­clu­sive of in­ter­est, and that the un­paid tax amount was for the pe­ri­od 2015-2024.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the ra­dio ex­ec­u­tive said there has been a great deal of “noise and mis­in­for­ma­tion” in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­ing TTRN’s fi­nances. He said the net­work is ful­ly com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing its oblig­a­tions to the BIR but did not specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress the is­sue of the amount of mon­ey he owes or the pe­ri­od of time his tax li­a­bil­i­ties have ac­crued.

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly last night that Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin has al­so ini­ti­at­ed a plan to pay some $93 mil­lion in tax­es owed to the BIR by his cine­plex chain.

In gen­er­al terms, the law of T&T, as en­shrined in this coun­try’s In­come Tax Act is: “In­come tax shall...be payable at the rate or rates spec­i­fied here­after for each year of in­come, up­on the in­come of any per­son ac­cru­ing in or de­rived from T&T or else­where, and whether re­ceived in T&T or not ...”

The le­gal oblig­a­tion for all T&T res­i­dents to pay tax­es on their in­come, above the thresh­old of $72,000 a year or $6,000 a month, is clear. This le­gal oblig­a­tion is con­nect­ed to the moral oblig­a­tion that all cit­i­zens are re­quired to pay tax­es on their in­come in or­der to con­tribute their fair share to the gen­er­al main­te­nance of the coun­try.

It is ob­vi­ous­ly un­fair that those em­ploy­ees, whose in­come is taxed at source, are oblig­ed to pay at least 25 per cent of the in­come they earn over $6,000 a month, while there are scores of busi­ness­men and oth­ers who pay no tax­es for years.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ex­cus­able be­cause the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has of­fered the pub­lic two tax amnesties in the re­cent past. Those amnesties waived penal­ties and in­ter­est on out­stand­ing tax li­a­bil­i­ties, pro­vid­ed that the prin­ci­pal amounts were paid with­in the pe­ri­od spec­i­fied in the en­abling leg­is­la­tion.

It is per­plex­ing that there are peo­ple in T&T who could ig­nore the tax amnesties in 2019 and 2023, but can de­clare full com­mit­ment to meet their oblig­a­tions to the BIR when the au­thor­i­ties pay at­ten­tion to them.

The BIR, now said to be owed as much as $15 bil­lion in tax­es, de­serves the plau­dits of the pop­u­la­tion if they have de­cid­ed to crack down on those who evade or avoid pay­ing the tax­es they owe. But the BIR must re­spond to the ques­tion on the minds of many: Why did the Gov­ern­ment de­part­ment re­spon­si­ble for col­lect­ing the coun­try’s tax­es wait for so long be­fore seek­ing to ad­dress the out­stand­ing tax bills of two cit­i­zens?