Gail Alexan­der

De­bate on the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance agree­ment with the US (Fat­ca) bill will re­sume in Par­lia­ment soon, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says.

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert as­sured the con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion–which fa­cil­i­tates US deal­ings with lo­cal fi­nan­cial en­ti­ties on US cit­i­zens' ac­counts–would be pre­sent­ed next month.

"The pre­cise date hasn't yet been fi­nalised," Im­bert said.

Par­lia­ment, on a break, re­sumes this Fri­day. Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials said fo­cus will be on oth­er mat­ters–not Fat­ca.

Fol­low­ing the 2017 bud­get, Gov­ern­ment placed the Fat­ca Bill high on the Par­lia­ment's agen­da.

Yes­ter­day, UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie said the Op­po­si­tion has amend­ments for the leg­is­la­tion.

He added the US' re­cent Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­tial win and im­pli­ca­tions of that for the leg­is­la­tion, must be fac­tored in­to de­bate.

"Giv­en the like­ly po­si­tion of the Trump as­pect, I don't know where this Fat­ca leg­is­la­tion in the US is go­ing to lead," Tewarie said.

"So re­al­i­ty de­mands we take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, even as we move dili­gent­ly to en­sure T&T and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions are se­cured and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests con­cern­ing fi­nances are al­so man­aged.

"For in­stance we may have Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) and Caribbean FATF con­sid­er­a­tions re­gard­ing Fat­ca."

The pro­posed T&T law per­tains to the US' Fat­ca agree­ment cen­tred on US tax law to com­bat off­shore tax eva­sion by US cit­i­zens with ac­counts and/or in­vest­ments with for­eign and non-fi­nan­cial en­ti­ties.

The law en­ables all lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions to iden­ti­fy and re­port to the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) on the ac­counts of US clients.

All banks will have to re­port clients with more than US$50,000 to the IRS.

Fail­ure to com­ply with Fat­ca would mean all fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and US cit­i­zens will be sub­ject to a with­hold­ing tax of 30 per cent ap­plied to all US-sourced in­come.

The leg­is­la­tion was ur­gent since lack of pas­sage would have failed to im­ple­ment the agree­ment and T&T's bank­ing sec­tor and on­line fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions with the US would have halt­ed, af­fect­ing the econ­o­my and T&T's diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with the US.

Agree­ment in prin­ci­ple was reached on the is­sue dur­ing the past PP Gov­ern­ment's tenure

The cur­rent PNM Gov­ern­ment had hoped to fi­nalise it by Sep­tem­ber. The bill re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, in­clud­ing at least three Op­po­si­tion votes for pas­sage.

But par­lia­men­tary de­bate in Sep­tem­ber time failed since the Op­po­si­tion UNC ex­pressed con­cerns about in­va­sion of rights and oth­er as­pects of the is­sue.

The Op­po­si­tion stat­ed it ap­pre­ci­at­ed the leg­is­la­tion's im­por­tance and T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and pledged to sup­port it–but raised spe­cif­ic con­cerns.

The Op­po­si­tion rec­om­mend­ed scruti­ny by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee.

Im­bert had said the Gov­ern­ment would seek an ex­ten­sion of time from the US to com­ply with Fat­ca.

He pledged to re­sume de­bate af­ter the 2017 bud­get de­bate, as­sur­ing the JSC would be es­tab­lished.

The Gov­ern­ment had in­formed the US of the sit­u­a­tion.

Im­bert said the US Trea­sury stat­ed since T&T had signed the agree­ment, showed re­solve to com­ply and en­act leg­is­la­tion, and sub­mit­ted an ac­tion plan for Fat­ca com­pli­ance, T&T is now con­sid­ered to have an agree­ment "in ef­fect" with the US.

He stressed the US made it clear T&T will be mon­i­tored in­to 2017 and if progress isn't made to achieve full com­pli­ance by the next (2017) re­port­ing dead­line, T&T would be black­list­ed.

US Am­bas­sador John Estra­da has al­so ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to pass the law by Feb­ru­ary 2017.