KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

As the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­tend­ed tax amnesty comes to an end to­day, pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC), Ki­ran Singh, says he is await­ing a re­port from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to de­ter­mine whether the ini­tia­tive achieved its in­tend­ed im­pact.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Singh not­ed that the amnesty ex­ten­sion pro­vid­ed much-need­ed re­lief to busi­ness­es nav­i­gat­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, al­low­ing them to set­tle their tax oblig­a­tions with­out in­cur­ring penal­ties.

“That ges­ture was ap­pre­ci­at­ed by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and we ex­pect­ed to meet the oblig­a­tion and do not feel that we can es­cape the tax­man,” Singh said.

De­spite the ap­proach­ing dead­line, there was no vis­i­ble rush at the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion's re­gion­al of­fices in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do. Guardian Me­dia ob­served that op­er­a­tions re­mained busi­ness as usu­al. How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Fi­nance had fa­cil­i­tat­ed on­line pay­ments for a va­ri­ety of tax­es, pro­vid­ing tax­pay­ers with an al­ter­na­tive to in-per­son trans­ac­tions.

The In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion first in­tro­duced the amnesty from Oc­to­ber 1, to De­cem­ber 31, 2024, of­fer­ing a waiv­er on penal­ties and in­ter­est for all out­stand­ing tax pe­ri­ods up to De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

How­ev­er, on Jan­u­ary 2, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced an ex­ten­sion un­til Jan­u­ary 31, with the nec­es­sary le­gal or­ders set to be retroac­tive­ly en­forced from 31st De­cem­ber 2024.

On whether a fur­ther ex­ten­sion is war­rant­ed, Singh said the Cham­ber re­mains un­cer­tain about how many peo­ple took ad­van­tage of the amnesty.

He sug­gest­ed that the de­ci­sion should be based on the num­ber of tax­pay­ers still wait­ing to set­tle their ar­rears and whether Im­bert be­lieves an­oth­er ex­ten­sion would be ef­fec­tive in in­creas­ing com­pli­ance.

“Based on the in­for­ma­tion that the Min­is­ter would have or col­lat­ed from the BIR, he would then be able to know if he should pe­nalise late pay­ers. I do think his idea of the amnesty is to en­cour­age peo­ple to make the pay­ment be­fore the dead­line so that they would not in­cur penal­ties.

"The Gov­ern­ment has a cash flow is­sue, and the pay­ment of tax­es would help the Gov­ern­ment to meet its fidu­cia­ry du­ties.”

While the GS­FCC re­mains cau­tious on the mat­ter, Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC), De­o­raj Ma­hase, be­lieves a fur­ther ex­ten­sion could be ben­e­fi­cial, as some busi­ness own­ers may have missed the dead­line due to the tran­si­tion from year-end to the new year.