DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Scores of bar own­ers gath­ered at Wood­ford Square yes­ter­day, just be­fore Par­lia­ment con­vened, ac­cus­ing the Fi­nance Min­is­ter of vic­tim­i­sa­tion over a pro­posed Amuse­ment Gam­ing Tax Bill that they say could crip­ple small and medi­um-sized bars and force wide­spread clo­sures.

More than 30 bar op­er­a­tors as­sem­bled qui­et­ly, as protests are pro­hib­it­ed un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter­wards, Bar­keep­ers Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BOATT) mem­ber Gu­niss Seecha­ran, said the leg­is­la­tion de­liv­ers yet an­oth­er hit to an in­dus­try al­ready on the brink. He point­ed to clause 20 of the bill, which would raise the gam­ing tax from $6,000 to $25,000 per amuse­ment ma­chine, and in­crease the tax on elec­tron­ic roulette from $120,000 to $200,000 per de­vice.

These hikes, he said, come as op­er­a­tors grap­ple with ris­ing al­co­hol prices, steep in­creas­es in li­cence fees, and high­er land­lord and elec­tric­i­ty costs.

He de­scribed the changes as “three lash­es” to the sec­tor and ques­tioned why a gov­ern­ment that many bar own­ers sup­port­ed at the polls is im­pos­ing ad­di­tion­al bur­dens.

“We are strug­gling at the mo­ment. The bar in­dus­try has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” Seecha­ran said.

“This Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, ei­ther he’s vic­tim­is­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion, he had some bad blood with the bar—we don’t know. We vot­ed for them, you know. But we didn’t ex­pect this kind of re­sult.”

He said the group in­tends to chal­lenge the mea­sures in court, al­leg­ing eco­nom­ic duress.

“I think we would have to go along that road, take this min­is­ter to court. I’m speak­ing out of the or­di­nary right now. I sup­port­ed him all along. I even cam­paigned for him.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the mea­sures, ar­gu­ing they are nec­es­sary to raise rev­enue and tight­en over­sight of what she de­scribed as a lu­cra­tive, large­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed gam­ing sec­tor.

She said Gov­ern­ment re­search showed that some gam­bling busi­ness­es earn more than $30,000 a month.

“We were told in our re­search that the amount of monies that they make could ex­ceed in ex­cess of $30,000 per month, some of these gam­bling places. And there­fore they should al­so be tasked with con­tribut­ing to the rev­enue of the coun­try be­cause they are ben­e­fit­ing from ex­pen­di­tures for their in­come.”

She added that many ma­chines re­main un­reg­is­tered, with il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty of­ten tied to the sec­tor.

“The gam­bling is­sue is… mat­ters that came be­fore us has to do with a lot of il­le­gal­i­ty that takes place.”

When asked about con­cerns over ris­ing al­co­hol prices, she replied, “It is what it is.”

Tan­coo ar­rived at Par­lia­ment short­ly be­fore the sit­ting be­gan at 1.30 pm.

He did not take ques­tions. But in a What­sApp mes­sage re­quest­ing a re­sponse to con­cerns raised, Tan­coo said, “I am sim­ply try­ing to en­sure that per­sons cur­rent­ly break­ing the law and those evad­ing tax­es on in­comes are made to fol­low the law and pay the rel­e­vant tax­es they OWE and should be pay­ing to the IR. There is ab­solute­ly no vic­tim­i­sa­tion in­volved. Iron­i­cal­ly,  IN­STEAD of charg­ing and pros­e­cut­ing per­sons for break­ing the law, we have opt­ed for the less harsh process of a pe­ri­od to bring their il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties to a halt and have busi­ness­es du­ly reg­is­tered. As I have  in­di­cat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, these are all sub­ject to re­view. In ad­di­tion a se­ries of oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion is be­ing pre­pared to cov­er all oth­er as­pects of gam­bling.”