The As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go has sued the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms over a de­ci­sion to ap­ply an im­port tax on its mem­bers’ left-hand-dri­ve hears­es.

In a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, filed this week af­ter a High Court Judge grant­ed leave for same, late last month, the as­so­ci­a­tion is claim­ing that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion act­ed un­rea­son­ably and ir­ra­tional­ly when it de­cid­ed to clas­si­fy such ve­hi­cles as be­ing for the trans­port of per­sons as op­posed to as a spe­cial pur­pose ve­hi­cle.

At the time when the is­sue arose in 2019, spe­cial pur­pose ve­hi­cles at­tract­ed no tax, while ve­hi­cles for trans­port­ing per­sons car­ried a 67.5 per cent tar­iff.

“The claimant avers that the clas­si­fi­ca­tion is wrong, with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and the im­port du­ty rate is ar­bi­trar­i­ly im­posed thus breach­ing the prin­ci­ple of the rule of law,” the court fil­ings stat­ed.

“The clear in­tent and pur­pose of these ve­hi­cles is for the spe­cial and unique pur­pose of trans­port­ing ca­dav­ers pur­suant to pro­vid­ing fu­ner­al ser­vices,” it added.

To but­tress its claim, the as­so­ci­a­tion point­ed out that its mem­bers were not re­quired to pay for the li­cence from the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, re­quired to im­port such ve­hi­cles.

At­tached to the law­suit was an af­fi­davit from the as­so­ci­a­tion’s Pres­i­dent Kei­th Bel­grove, who de­tailed how and why it raised the le­gal chal­lenge.

He claimed that in June 2019, one of its mem­bers Simp­son’s Memo­r­i­al Lim­it­ed was slapped with the tax clas­si­fi­ca­tion as it at­tempt­ed to im­port a Lin­coln Town Car hearse from the Unit­ed States.

Ex­plain­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s de­lay in bring­ing the law­suit, Bel­grove stat­ed that its mem­ber on­ly in­formed the as­so­ci­a­tion months lat­er and it (the as­so­ci­a­tion) had to make re­quests for ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion and seek le­gal ad­vice.

“The ef­fect of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic cre­at­ed de­lay in al­low­ing the claimant to con­sult with all of its mem­bers to re­ceive con­sen­sus to pro­ceed with le­gal ac­tion,” the doc­u­ments said.

Its lawyers sug­gest­ed that the de­lay did not prej­u­dice the comp­trol­ler and that there was pub­lic in­ter­est in hav­ing the is­sue de­ter­mined as it has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the fu­ner­al home in­dus­try.

Bel­grove al­so not­ed that the law­suit specif­i­cal­ly dealt with pur­pose built hears­es from the Unit­ed State and not lux­u­ry sta­tion wag­ons, that are some­times im­port­ed by fu­ner­al homes and mod­i­fied to work as hears­es.

“Such a ve­hi­cle can eas­i­ly be re­con­vert­ed to an or­di­nary lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle. Such a ve­hi­cle I would agree is not specif­i­cal­ly built to func­tion as a hearse and as such ought to be clas­si­fied as mo­tor ve­hi­cles prin­ci­pal­ly de­signed for the trans­port of per­sons,” Bel­grove said.

Through the law­suit, the as­so­ci­a­tion is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the clas­si­fi­ca­tion was un­law­ful and an or­der in­struct­ing their sug­gest­ed clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

It is al­so seek­ing dam­ages for the mis­clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

The law­suit is ex­pect­ed to come up for vir­tu­al hear­ing on May 11.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Chelsea John and Rhea Khan.