With the fi­nal le­gal hur­dle now cleared fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the case chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), there should be no fur­ther im­ped­i­ments to its full im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The plan for a sin­gle en­ti­ty to ad­min­is­ter rev­enue col­lec­tion and en­force­ment, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and bor­der con­trol, can now come in­to full op­er­a­tion. Be­fore the le­gal bat­tle with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, the pop­u­la­tion had been promised a mod­ernised regime that will op­er­ate with the ef­fi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy, which was lack­ing in the agen­cies it will re­place.

In the unan­i­mous Privy Coun­cil rul­ing in the case brought by pub­lic ser­vant Ter­risa Dho­ray, ques­tions about the TTRA’s le­gal­i­ty are an­swered.

Lords Reed, Lloyd-Jones, Bur­rows, Stephens and La­dy Sim­ler have stat­ed that its es­tab­lish­ment does not al­ter any en­trenched pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion. As it per­tains to the sta­tus of the for­mer Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) staff who will be ab­sorbed in­to the TTRA, the law lords stat­ed de­fin­i­tive­ly that there are no ex­press pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion which re­quire that gov­ern­ment func­tions be per­formed on­ly by pub­lic of­fi­cers.

Any con­fu­sion in the minds of pub­lic of­fi­cers, who were hes­i­tant about ex­er­cis­ing their op­tions to ei­ther trans­fer to the TTRA, re­tire, or seek a suit­able al­ter­na­tive po­si­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice, has been cleared up once and for all. How­ev­er, the de­tails of what ac­cept­ing a trans­fer to the TTRA or oth­er pub­lic en­ti­ties will en­tail, in terms of ben­e­fits for the work­ers, re­main to be ham­mered out.

Still, all doubts have been re­moved by the land­mark rul­ing.

In that re­gard, the le­gal ac­tion by the PSA served a valu­able pur­pose that was not achieved by all the me­dia re­leas­es and of­fi­cial state­ments from the Fi­nance Min­istry on the in­tro­duc­tion of the TTRA.

All that is left now is for a steady flow of in­for­ma­tion to the tax­pay­ing pub­lic, so that there can be a seam­less tran­si­tion from the CED and IRD to the ful­ly merged en­ti­ty.

Gov­ern­ment can start by high­light­ing the many ben­e­fits of the TTRA, among them clos­ing an es­ti­mat­ed do­mes­tic tax gap of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $10 bil­lion through more ef­fi­cient and pro­duc­tive rev­enue col­lec­tion.

An­oth­er ma­jor boost is that T&T’s tax and cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tions will be de-politi­cised and more peo­ple will be brought in­to the tax-pay­ing net, mak­ing the tax bur­den lighter and more eq­ui­table and boost­ing the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ings.

Per­haps these will be ad­dressed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert when he presents the na­tion­al bud­get in a few weeks.

Ef­forts to im­prove T&T’s sys­tem of rev­enue col­lec­tion date as far back as 2002, when a com­mit­tee head­ed by late busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive Gor­don Deane was ap­point­ed to re­view and come up with rec­om­men­da­tions.

How­ev­er, as is typ­i­cal with such things in this coun­try, it took al­most a full decade of talk, stud­ies and po­lit­i­cal stops and starts be­fore leg­is­la­tion could be draft­ed, de­bat­ed and passed.

The TTRA Act was as­sent­ed to by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on De­cem­ber 23, 2021, and par­tial­ly pro­claimed on March 14, 2022. Since then, a board of man­age­ment has been ap­point­ed, staff re­cruit­ed and op­er­a­tional de­tails not hin­dered by the PSA law­suit put in­to place.

The process was slow and frus­trat­ing but hope­ful­ly, there is now a tem­plate that can be fol­lowed to bring about the more pro­duc­tive, ef­fi­cient and mod­ern sys­tems in the oth­er parts of the pub­lic ser­vice. This coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs it.