Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s main busi­ness cham­bers are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to help them save jobs by im­ple­ment­ing a tax cred­it on salaries for com­pa­nies that do not make any prof­it over the next three months.

The call was made yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go, En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try & Com­merce, T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Mon­day to dis­cuss the ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on lo­cal busi­ness­es and the wider so­ci­ety.

“With the ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­es suf­fer­ing from a near-to­tal col­lapse of sales and there­fore thou­sands of in­di­vid­u­als fac­ing a fall in in­come, we ap­peal to the Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the re­ten­tion of em­ploy­ment through a tax cred­it on salaries for com­pa­nies who re­alise no prof­its dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” a joint re­lease from the cham­bers said.

“We pro­pose that for each em­ploy­ee that the reg­is­tered busi­ness­es keep on their pay­roll through the next three months (i.e. April-June 2020), the Gov­ern­ment grants an ad­di­tion­al tax cred­it (of be­tween 100%-150%) of the first $6,000 of the em­ploy­ee’s salary. This tax cred­it can be ap­plied pro­por­tion­al­ly over a three-year pe­ri­od start­ing Q3 2020.”

This was just one of five items the cham­bers deemed crit­i­cal in the im­me­di­ate term.

They al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to de­fer the pay­ment of cor­po­ra­tion tax and Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) for the next three months. This re­quest comes one day af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ap­pealed to peo­ple to re­mem­ber their tax oblig­a­tions to T&T at this time, since the coun­try will need all the mon­ey it can get to ma­noeu­vre through these tough eco­nom­ic times.

On Mon­day, Im­bert host­ed a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence to pro­vide up­dates on the rev­enue for fis­cal 2020, the Salary Re­lief Grant and oth­er fi­nan­cial mat­ters. He said the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced a short­fall in rev­enue of $700 mil­lion for the first quar­ter of 2020.

Im­bert’s press con­fer­ence came hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed stricter Stay-at-Home mea­sures in the fight against CIVID-19, in­clud­ing the clo­sure of all restau­rants and re­duced open­ing hours for su­per­mar­kets and phar­ma­cies.

“While we un­der­stand that this is a tricky is­sue and di­rect­ly im­pacts the Gov­ern­ment’s cash flow and there­fore abil­i­ty to cush­ion the fall­out to all sec­tors of so­ci­ety, we ask Gov­ern­ment to still con­sid­er a de­fer­ral of Cor­po­ra­tion Tax and Val­ue Added Tax pay­ments for the up­com­ing pe­ri­od through June 2020. We be­lieve the tem­po­rary cash flow in­ter­rup­tion to Gov­ern­ment can be man­aged, in light of the HSF with­draw­al and the re­al­i­sa­tion of vir­tu­al­ly bud­get­ed cor­po­ra­tion tax re­ceipts in Q1 2020. We al­so ask for a waiv­er of penal­ty in­ter­est for late pay­ment of same for Q1 and Q2 of 2020,” the cham­bers stat­ed yes­ter­day.

“The busi­ness groups are, how­ev­er, ap­peal­ing to all busi­ness­es - large and small - that are able to make these tax pay­ments dur­ing this pe­ri­od, to do so. We ex­pect all busi­ness­es to con­tin­ue pay­ment of NIS and Health Sur­charge.”

One of the main ini­tia­tives that Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment would be launch­ing to help those who may lose their jobs dur­ing the COVID-19 mea­sures is a Salary Re­lief Grant. The first phase of the grant cov­ers three months – April, May and June – and can be ac­cessed by cit­i­zens who are en­rolled on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance data­base and have ei­ther lost their jobs per­ma­nent­ly or tem­porar­i­ly be­cause of COVID-19 mea­sures. The grant is $1,500 month­ly and Im­bert said 80,000 peo­ple are es­ti­mat­ed to be el­i­gi­ble. The Gov­ern­ment has es­ti­mat­ed the grant will cost tax­pay­ers around $400 mil­lion. The sec­ond phase of the Salary Re­lief Grant is ex­pect­ed to tar­get the self-em­ployed and those who are not on the NIS sys­tem.

The cham­bers al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to of­fer sup­port to the self-em­ployed and their em­ploy­ees.

“We pro­pose that the Gov­ern­ment ex­tends in­come sup­port to the self-em­ployed and their em­ploy­ees in the ‘in­for­mal’ sec­tor. We rec­om­mend this sup­port for the ‘in­for­mal’ busi­ness own­ers and their em­ploy­ees at min­i­mum, un­der the same terms as the salary re­lief grant to re­trenched em­ploy­ees, once these busi­ness­es and their em­ploy­ees reg­is­ter with the BIR,” the cham­bers stat­ed.

“Un­reg­is­tered busi­ness­es could be en­cour­aged to reg­is­ter, pos­si­bly through their re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, with the un­der­stand­ing that they will be for­giv­en for past non-pay­ment of tax­es but will be re­quired to pay go­ing for­ward. Such a move will widen the tax net and as­sist with the re­build­ing of Gov­ern­ment rev­enue once busi­ness and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty re­turn to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy.”

The cham­bers are al­so ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to launch a Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery Fund.

“Based on the sub­stan­tial ex­cess funds both US$ and TT$ in the bank­ing sys­tem, there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for GORTT to mo­bilise these funds and launch a Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery Fund de­nom­i­nat­ed in both cur­ren­cies. Any busi­ness or cit­i­zen can make a con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er small,” the cham­bers stat­ed.

“There should be some form of in­cen­tive by way of de­duc­tion for tax pur­pos­es over the next 5-10 years at 150 per cent. Ide­al­ly, it should not be struc­tured in the form of debt, so as not to im­pact GORTT bor­row­ing lim­its and debt ra­tios. This fund must be kept sep­a­rate from oth­er funds and over­seen by a board made up of rep­utable pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It should be used to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness and for em­ploy­ment gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Fi­nal­ly, the cham­bers called on Gov­ern­ment to say what the plan go­ing for­ward is when it comes to the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem dur­ing these try­ing times.

“Clar­i­ty needs to be giv­en on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem go­ing for­ward. The Cham­bers call on the Gov­ern­ment to de­sign, clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate and im­ple­ment a plan to en­sure that teach­ing and learn­ing can re­sume af­ter April 20th, 2020. The Cham­bers are will­ing to work with their mem­bers to ex­plore means of sup­port­ing this ef­fort,” the cham­bers said.

“We al­so com­mend the many com­pa­nies who are al­ready do­ing what they can to min­imise the dis­rup­tion of ed­u­ca­tion. We high­light com­pa­nies such as TSL and At­lantic for mak­ing the Pen­na­cool sys­tem more wide­ly avail­able and the myr­i­ad of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and ser­vice providers who are as­sist­ing with im­ple­men­ta­tion of on­line learn­ing so­lu­tions. How­ev­er, we ac­knowl­edge that not every school and cer­tain­ly not every child will have ac­cess to tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-en­abled ed­u­ca­tion and re­it­er­ate our will­ing­ness to sup­port the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in bridg­ing these gaps to the ex­tent pos­si­ble.”

The cham­bers added, “While we recog­nise that these mea­sures are but a small part of what needs to be done to bring sta­bil­i­ty and then get to re­cov­ery, we do hope that the Gov­ern­ment will con­sid­er and im­ple­ment these mea­sures as we be­lieve they will go a long way in build­ing trust and con­fi­dence and give busi­ness some mi­nor, but need­ed re­lief in the cur­rent, very dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­ment.”

At­tempts to get an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from Im­bert yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not re­spond to calls to his cell­phone nor an­swer What­sApp mes­sages.