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Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, yes­ter­day an­nounced that the 2024 tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance amnesties would be ex­tend­ed to March 31, 2025.

Im­bert said the amnesties have been suc­cess­ful in en­sur­ing col­lec­tions, and over­all com­pli­ance.

"We just ex­tend­ed the tax and NIS amnesties to March 31, 2025, in­clud­ing prop­er­ty tax. This will help SMEs, who are cur­rent­ly un­able to ten­der to pro­vide goods and ser­vices to pub­lic bod­ies due to un­paid tax­es and NIS, pro­vid­ing them with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rec­ti­fy their sit­u­a­tion," the min­is­ter stat­ed in a post on X/Twit­ter.

Im­bert al­so not­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) will be­come ful­ly op­er­a­tional this year, and the coun­try at large has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come ful­ly com­pli­ant.

“The cur­rent tax and na­tion­al in­sur­anceamnesty will al­low tax­pay­ers to put their hous­es in or­der and to pay their out­stand­ing tax­es be­fore the TTRA is op­er­a­tional,” he said.

And an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry re­port­ed that as of Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 27, 2025, the tax amnesty had raised $2.38 bil­lion in rev­enue.

The Min­istry said com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, the cur­rent tax amnesty is now on par with the 2019, which was the most suc­cess­ful pol­i­cy of its kind im­ple­ment­ed in the his­to­ry of T&T in terms of col­lec­tions.

“It is now like­ly that the cur­rent 2024/2025 tax amnesty will ex­ceed the col­lec­tions in 2019,” the min­istry said.

The 2019 tax amnesty raised $2.382 bil­lion, which was al­most five times the orig­i­nal es­ti­mate of $500 mil­lion.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance al­so point­ed out that un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, which was pro­claimed in 2023, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) which are not up to date with their tax and na­tion­alin­sur­ance pay­ments face sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in par­tic­i­pat­ing in pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings by min­istries, statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and state en­ter­pris­es.

In this re­gard, said the Min­istry of Fi­nance, sec­tion 29(1)(c) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act is rel­e­vant:

“A procur­ing en­ti­ty shall en­sure that sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors — have ful­filled their oblig­a­tions to pay all re­quired tax­es and con­tri­bu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The min­istry’s re­lease ex­plained:

“Bear­ing the above in mind, both Reg­u­la­tion 4(3) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Pre-Qual­i­fi­ca­tion and Pre-Se­lec­tion) Reg­u­la­tions and Reg­u­la­tion 10 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Sim­pli­fied Pro­cure­ment) Reg­u­la­tions, whilst re­spec­tive­ly al­low­ing pay­ment plan agree­ments and a pe­ri­od of six months to set­tle out­stand­ing tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance pay­ments, do not ab­solve SMEs from their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing cur­rent with tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance pay­ments.”

“Con­se­quent­ly, giv­en the vi­tal role of SMEs in em­ploy­ing peo­ple, con­tribut­ing to the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct, and sus­tain­ing eco­nom­ic growth, it has been con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to en­sure that SMEs can con­tin­ue par­tic­i­pat­ing in pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings by ex­tend­ing the tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance amnesty,” the Min­istry said.

It added: “This would per­mit SMEs suf­fi­cient time to ad­dress out­stand­ing tax and na­tion­al in­sur­ance oblig­a­tions.”

In de­liv­er­ing the 2025 bud­get speech, Im­bert said tax amnesties over the years have proven to a valu­able source of ad­di­tion­al rev­enue and have gen­er­at­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in pay­ments.

"We do not wish to en­cour­age tax avoid­ance, but now that the Privy Coun­cil has ruled in the Gov­ern­ment’s favour, with re­spect to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, which now al­lows us to move apace to pop­u­late and op­er­a­tionalise this new Au­thor­i­ty, we will give tax­pay­ers one last op­por­tu­ni­ty to put their house in or­der and pay up their out­stand­ing tax­es be­fore the TTRA is in full op­er­a­tion, with­out be­ing sub­ject to penal­ties and in­ter­est," said Im­bert.