Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has passed a bill de­signed to help T&T get off the Eu­ro­pean Union’s black­list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions - and to al­so be re­moved from the Glob­al Fo­rum’s non-com­pli­ance list.

The 18-Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Glob­al Fo­rum) Bill was pi­lot­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm on Fri­day. It was the first item of work on which the House em­barked im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment be­gan.

The bill was passed with amend­ments from the EU. It re­quired on­ly sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty - Gov­ern­ment votes - for pas­sage. The Op­po­si­tion had queried and ob­ject­ed to var­i­ous as­pects.

In pi­lot­ing de­bate, Im­bert said the point of the bill is to re­move T&T from the EU’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions for tax pur­pos­es.

The bill makes amend­ments to 16 laws, rang­ing from cor­rup­tion pre­ven­tion and an­ti-ter­ror­ism law to the Com­pa­nies Act and non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion laws.

Pro­vi­sions for com­pa­nies strength­en the rules of iden­ti­fy­ing ben­e­fi­cial own­ers, in­creas­es re­port­ing oblig­a­tions and cer­tain penal­ties and in­tro­duces new sec­tions - in­clud­ing em­pow­er­ing the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al to in­spect reg­is­ters/books/doc­u­ments of com­pa­nies, trusts and non prof­it en­ti­ties.

The bill em­pow­ers T&T’s reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies to move ef­fec­tive­ly to ex­change tax in­for­ma­tion with oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions in line with var­i­ous agree­ments. Im­bert said it in­tro­duces strict con­trols to pre­vent mis­use of tax in­for­ma­tion, pro­tect tax­pay­ers’ rights and en­sure in­for­ma­tion ex­change ad­heres to the terms of agree­ments to which T&T is bound.

He said the bill is de­signed to en­sure T&T re­mains at­trac­tive to glob­al in­vestors who are com­pelled to com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of tax trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The bill was de­vel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion and un­der the guid­ance of the Glob­al Fo­rum Sec­re­tari­at, which vis­it­ed T&T in March to do a mock peer re­view on trans­paren­cy and tax in­for­ma­tion ex­change.

Im­bert said ad­di­tion­al amend­ments on cer­tain claus­es - which he re­ceived Thurs­day night - were pro­vid­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing and Counter-Ter­ror­ism Fi­nanc­ing (AMLCTF) Glob­al Fa­cil­i­ty. That fa­cil­i­ty is cur­rent­ly in T&T on a mis­sion fo­cused on ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship and has been en­gag­ing with state agen­cies. Their ex­perts pro­vid­ed valu­able guid­ance on the bill’s pro­vi­sions, he added.

Im­bert said the amend­ments were crit­i­cal as, “if we don’t ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Glob­al Fo­rum/EU team, we may run the risk of not be­ing suc­cess­ful in the peer re­view process in which we’re cur­rent­ly en­gaged to get off the EU black­list and the G non-com­pli­ance list.”

“The bill re­flects T&T’s com­mit­ment to glob­al stan­dards of tax trans­paren­cy. We’ve been giv­en a se­ries of dead­lines to achieve our ob­jec­tive of com­ing off of the grey list/black list/com­pli­ance list - what­ev­er you want to call them - by year-end.”

Im­bert said he wrote the chair­man of the Code of Con­duct Group in the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil in Ju­ly out­lin­ing the ex­ten­sive ef­forts T&T’s un­der­tak­en and reaf­firm­ing the com­mit­ment to meet­ing the nec­es­sary re­quire­ments for T&T’s re­moval from the list of non-co-op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions.

Im­bert said he was sat­is­fied Gov­ern­ment achieved a ro­bust flex­i­ble strat­e­gy to deal with T&T’s re­moval from the EU’s black­list and that T&T has a strong work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Glob­al Fo­rum and OECD.

Say­ing the bill was ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial, Im­bert urged MPs to work to­wards re­mov­ing T&T from the grey and black lists so it could be­come a des­ti­na­tion “that wouldn’t have that stig­ma” and for­eign in­vest­ment wouldn’t be af­fect­ed.

The House lat­er ad­journed to a date to be fixed.