PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The 2023 tax amnesty has of­fi­cial­ly come to an end.

On Au­gust 18, the Board of In­land Rev­enue put out a pub­lic no­tice stat­ing the amnesty would of­fi­cial­ly end yes­ter­day Sep­tem­ber 1, 2023.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Min­istry of Fi­nance yes­ter­day to con­firm if there would be any fur­ther ex­ten­sion and of­fi­cials stat­ed there had been no in­di­ca­tion of such.

The amnesty was an­nounced in the 2023 bud­get, de­liv­ered on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

It was ini­tial­ly set to run from No­vem­ber 14, 2022, to Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, and was orig­i­nal­ly meant to raise $300 mil­lion to $500 mil­lion.

The amnesty waived the penal­ties and in­ter­est on tax­es owed up to and in­clud­ing the year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2021.

In an­nounc­ing the tax amnesty, Im­bert said, “We recog­nise that be­cause of the pub­lic health re­stric­tions and ad­verse eco­nom­ic ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly small busi­ness­es, suf­fered such se­vere loss of in­come in 2020 and 2021 that they fell be­hind in their tax­es.

“Al­though we in­tro­duced an amnesty in 2021, many busi­ness­es were still strug­gling to keep afloat and were un­able to take ad­van­tage of the amnesty at that time.”

The tax amnesty was ex­tend­ed sev­er­al times, with Min­is­ter Im­bert stat­ing in March that should have giv­en busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als more time to pre­pare their fi­nan­cial state­ments and fi­nalise the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion to sub­mit their tax re­turns and pay the tax­es due for the year of in­come 2021 and pri­or years.

In the ex­ten­sion an­nounced on June 30, which took the dead­line to Au­gust 31, Im­bert said that the de­ci­sion was tak­en be­cause in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, all sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors to pub­lic bod­ies must have “ful­filled their oblig­a­tions to pay all re­quired tax­es and con­tri­bu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“What this means is since the procla­ma­tion of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act on April 26, 2023, sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices to min­istries, de­part­ments, agen­cies, statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties, state en­ter­pris­es and oth­er pub­lic bod­ies must now be able to pro­duce a tax clear­ance cer­tifi­cate from the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion or cer­tifi­cate of com­pli­ance from the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, if ap­plic­a­ble, or al­ter­na­tive­ly, ev­i­dence of pay­ment arrange­ments with the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and/or the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board to pay out­stand­ing tax­es and/or con­tri­bu­tions, if ap­plic­a­ble,” stat­ed the Min­istry of Fi­nance news re­lease.

Af­ter an­nounc­ing an ex­ten­sion in March, Im­bert said the orig­i­nal tar­get of $500 mil­lion from the amnesty had been ex­ceed­ed, and the mon­ey raised had as­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s cash flow to a sig­nif­i­cant ex­tent, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a time of de­clin­ing oil and gas prices.

Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan said the amnesty has seen nu­mer­ous ex­ten­sions be­cause it has proven to be suc­cess­ful.

“This amnesty is one that has been go­ing on for quite a while and the min­is­ter has, I think a few times, ex­tend­ed the amnesty and he has ex­tend­ed the amnesty be­cause it has proven suc­cess­ful. So I think we have to judge I analyse the amnesty in the con­text of the pur­pose for which it was put in place and the re­sults clear­ly jus­ti­fies it. Hav­ing put in place the amnesty and hav­ing ex­tend­ed it on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions too, for com­pa­nies to make good on and then get up to date with re­spect to the tax­es,” said Dr Sage­wan.

This is the fifth tax amnesty im­ple­ment­ed by the gov­ern­ment since 2014, and the sixth since 2010.

In 2010 the amnesty raised $1.6B while in 2014/15 the amnesty gar­nered $2.4B, the 2016 amnesty earned $766.7 mil­lion, 2019 saw a sum of $2.4B and 2021 saw a re­turn of $1.1B.

Guardian Me­dia asked the Min­istry of Fi­nance if it could pro­vide an es­ti­mate of the amount of mon­ey raised by the amnesty. There was no re­sponse.