Derek Achong

For­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne has sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should move to ad­dress long­stand­ing is­sues in the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion be­fore go­ing ahead with plans to re­place them with a new Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty. 

In an in­ter­view with tele­vi­sion sta­tion CNC3 yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Browne, who along with for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira first pro­posed the au­thor­i­ty in 2009, said that he was not op­posed to it. 

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that if is­sues with­in the two ex­ist­ing agen­cies were not ad­dressed they would be po­ten­tial­ly be car­ried over to the new au­thor­i­ty. 

“The Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty can­not be a change of name,” Browne said. 

To il­lus­trate his point, Browne utilised the ex­am­ple of when the Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty (NHA) was trans­formed in­to the cur­rent Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). 

“The re-brand­ing ex­er­cise of which I speak is the dif­fer­ence be­tween NHA and HDC where we took on board lit­er­al­ly all of the prob­lems of the NHA at the HDC and we nev­er fixed it,” Browne said. 

Browne sought to high­light the im­por­tance of the BIR, which is the agency the Gov­ern­ment col­lects the ma­jor­i­ty of its rev­enue from. 

“In­land Rev­enue is the key to every­thing. In­land Rev­enue is how Gov­ern­ment func­tions so it will make sense to spend mon­ey on that as a pri­or­i­ty to get it work­ing right,” he said. 

Browne sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should take the time to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion on the pro­posed sys­tem­at­ic changes which the au­thor­i­ty is in­tend­ed to bring in­stead of sim­ply seek­ing to have the leg­is­la­tion passed in Par­lia­ment. 

“There will be is­sues but what you want to make cer­tain is that the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and the IT sys­tems work,” he said. 

On Fri­day, the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) Bill was passed in the Sen­ate with 21 votes for and sev­en against.

There was one ab­sten­tion. 

The leg­is­la­tion, which does not re­quire a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty, now has to be de­bat­ed and passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

The leg­is­la­tion has not re­ceived sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion, which has de­scribed it as un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and has threat­ened to take the is­sue to court. 

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor David Nakhid has claimed that it would cost tax­pay­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700 mil­lion to set up the au­thor­i­ty. 

In his con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment last week, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ty would be vi­tal in help­ing to in­crease this coun­try’s tax rev­enue and col­lec­tion. 

He es­ti­mat­ed that the coun­try los­es close to $5 bil­lion in Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) rev­enue an­nu­al­ly due to is­sues in the ex­ist­ing agen­cies.