An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Lack of fund­ing for the Tax Ap­peal Board con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor prob­lem for the or­gan­i­sa­tion in its dri­ve to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly.

Dur­ing his re­marks at the open­ing of the term of the Tax Ap­peal Board yes­ter­day, the in­sti­tu­tion’s chair­man, Dr An­tho­ny Gafoor, said in the 2023 bud­get the in­sti­tu­tion re­ceived $9.7 mil­lion and in the re­cent bud­get for 2024 it was al­lo­cat­ed $9.9 mil­lion.

“This rep­re­sents a neg­li­gi­ble amount as it can be seen that the na­tion­al bud­get was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $59 bil­lion in the re­vised es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture in 2023. This, in fact, means that the Tax Ap­peal Board re­ceives ap­prox­i­mate­ly 0.01 per cent of to­tal gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture for 2024.

“The na­ture of the work that is done by the Court and the quan­tum and fig­ures run in­to bil­lions of dol­lars and it is in­con­ceiv­able how such an or­gan­i­sa­tion can ef­fec­tive­ly op­er­ate with such a lim­it­ed bud­get, giv­en the sig­nif­i­cance of this Court to the na­tion­al econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly the en­er­gy and busi­ness sec­tors,” Dr Gafoor lament­ed.

He not­ed that giv­en the re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture the Tax Ap­peal Board faces, it would be un­like­ly that the court would be able to achieve the need­ed im­prove­ments.

“Sure­ly the pow­ers that be must take no­tice that a su­pe­ri­or court of record that has been in ex­is­tence for 57 years can­not ef­fec­tive­ly func­tion on 0.1 per cent of Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly since it must be not­ed that most of the al­lo­ca­tions are for wages and salaries, rent and se­cu­ri­ty,” the chair­man out­lined.

He said that more staffing would be wel­comed along with the re­lo­ca­tion of the of­fices of the Tax Ap­peal Board.

“There were dis­cus­sions about us mov­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front on Wright­son Road, but that has not ma­te­ri­alised,” the chair­man re­vealed.

Dr Gafoor once again made a call for strong con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to up­dat­ing the Board’s leg­is­la­tion.

He in­di­cat­ed that such re­form mea­sures have fo­cused on sev­er­al im­por­tant de­vel­op­ments such as en­sur­ing that there is less con­fu­sion about the per­ceived ad­min­is­tra­tive con­nec­tion be­tween the tax au­thor­i­ties and the Tax Ap­peal Board.

“The name ‘Tax Ap­peal Board’ is a ti­tle which, for over five decades, has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed on the per­cep­tion of this Court as part of the Board of In­land Rev­enue. Notwith­stand­ing the pro­posed Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, we feel strong­ly that the time is long over­due for the Court to be for­mal­ly re­named as the Tax Ap­peal Court of T&T,” said Gafoor.

Oth­er im­por­tant mea­sures he out­lined in­clud­ed en­sur­ing that the board is af­ford­ed ad­e­quate space and fa­cil­i­ties with which to op­er­ate.

“This is well chron­i­cled in the Court’s Re­port for the pe­ri­od 2019-2023. Since 2010, some 10 years be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the Court was al­so re-con­cep­tu­alised as an en­ti­ty that could en­com­pass a much more vi­sion­ary role by re­form­ing its ad­min­is­tra­tive ma­chin­ery to es­tab­lish a Court Ex­ec­u­tive Ad­min­is­tra­tive De­part­ment as well as the en­hanced use of tech­nol­o­gy,” the chair­man said.

He said that most of the board’s cas­es are from the en­er­gy sec­tor, and pri­vate com­pa­nies, and of late it has seen a high in­flux of Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion mat­ters about tax is­sues.