Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Dan­ger­ous!

This is how for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has de­scribed claus­es in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment's Fi­nance Bill 2025 which seek to place po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees on the Board of In­land Rev­enue, and an­oth­er clause to in­crease Gov­ern­ment's for­eign bor­row­ing lim­it by at least $15 bil­lion.

He be­lieves both could have fall­out for the pub­lic and T&T's purse.

Im­bert is al­so con­cerned about "ex­ces­sive­ly" bu­reau­crat­ic process­es for land­lord sur­charge pay­ments - in­clud­ing where land­lords will have to do the nec­es­sary reg­is­tra­tion process every time ten­ants change.

Im­bert spoke about the bill at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain.

The bill will be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at 1.30 pm.

The Sen­ate al­so meets at 1.30 pm to­mor­row to con­tin­ue de­bate on the Home In­va­sion (Self De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill.

Im­bert said no­tice of the Fi­nance bill for HoR de­bate came Tues­day night and it was very un­usu­al for such short no­tice to be giv­en for such com­plex leg­is­la­tion, which is 44 pages long.

He dis­missed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's com­ment that the bill “will con­tain fis­cal mea­sures out­lined” in the Bud­get and it “con­tains the ex­act fis­cal mea­sures” an­nounced in the Bud­get.

Im­bert list­ed a num­ber of new items in the bill which he said were not an­nounced in the Bud­get. List­ing some oth­er re­marks the PM has made, Im­bert said some­thing seems to be wrong as the things she was say­ing "don’t make sense."

Im­bert said the Fi­nance bill has some very dan­ger­ous things and al­so among some new an­nounce­ments are mea­sures that will bur­den the "small man."

“Clause 15 is ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous - it’s an at­tack on in­sti­tu­tions, on democ­ra­cy and an at­tack on pri­va­cy,” Im­bert said.

He said the clause changes the com­po­si­tion of the Board of In­land Rev­enue’s board from the cur­rent five pub­lic of­fi­cers to six pub­lic of­fi­cers - plus two po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees.

“That’s un­heard of in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety. They’ll have ac­cess to your pri­vate, per­son­al tax in­for­ma­tion, and the pow­er to in­flu­ence as­sess­ments, re­funds, re­turns and en­force­ment. I’m pret­ty sure this will of­fend the Glob­al Fo­rum re­quire­ments for tax trans­paren­cy,” Im­bert said

“I can’t be­lieve the UNC would want to do this. Look at their ap­pointees - peo­ple be­fore the courts, they’re putting on boards of im­por­tant state en­ter­pris­es, so I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see two ques­tion­able char­ac­ters ap­pear on BIR's board af­ter this bill is passed - it’s fright­en­ing.”

Im­bert said Sec­tion 4 of the PNM's T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Act would have pro­hib­it­ed a min­is­ter from ac­cess­ing pri­vate in­for­ma­tion.

Im­bert said Clause 14, which was not in the Bud­get ei­ther, is “ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous.” It in­creas­es the max­i­mum al­low­able lim­it for ex­ter­nal for­eign loans from $50 mil­lion cur­rent­ly to $45B.

He added, “It in­creas­es the lim­it for for­eign bor­row­ing by at least $15 bil­lion. It’s ob­vi­ous the Gov­ern­ment wants to go for­eign to bor­row mon­ey for what­ev­er it plans. That’s very, very dan­ger­ous be­cause our cur­rent for­eign debt or ex­ter­nal debt to GDP ra­tio is now about 21 per cent. This will take it up to over 30 per cent and that has al­ways been flagged by the rat­ing agen­cies - Moodys, Stan­dard and Poors - as be­ing right on the thresh­old for a down­grade.

“But they want to in­crease our for­eign debt by $15 bil­lion - a cer­tain down­grade will fol­low.”

He said Clause 5 - au­tho­ris­ing the po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor to cre­ate of­fi­cial eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics - wasn’t in the bud­get.

“Coun­tries re­ly on pub­lic of­fi­cers to guard sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta. The CBTT gov­er­nor will be giv­en au­thor­i­ty to make up his own eco­nom­ic da­ta .. pre­vi­ous­ly, it was pub­lic ser­vants who would be al­lowed to deal with spe­cif­ic, very nar­row da­ta.”

Ex­ces­sive­ly bu­reau­crat­ic process for lan­dords

Im­bert then slammed the “ex­ces­sive­ly bu­reau­crat­ic” land­lord sur­charge, whose as­pects in the bill ex­tend from clause 19 to 91. He said he hadn’t seen this lev­el of bu­reau­cra­cy in leg­is­la­tion be­fore.

Im­bert said 15 years ago, the na­tion­al cen­sus es­ti­mat­ed there were about 78,000 per­sons en­gaged in rental arrange­ments - res­i­dence, an­nex or room. He es­ti­mat­ed there are now about 100,000 rental units.

Im­bert queried the process be­ing placed on land­lords, in­clud­ing reg­is­tra­tion.

“All the lit­tle peo­ple, el­der­ly peo­ple rent­ing out a room or an­nex to make ex­tra mon­ey - which may be about half the 100,000 - will have to reg­is­ter as a land­lord, fill out forms, iden­ti­fy ten­ants and if the ten­ant changes, you have to reg­is­ter again,” he said.

He said it’s stat­ed in the 2026 Bud­get that the $2,500 reg­is­tra­tion fee is a “one-time reg­is­tra­tion fee.”

Im­bert added, “In ad­di­tion to in­creas­ing rents, land­lords will have to hire an ac­coun­tant to go through all of this, reg­is­ter prop­er­ty, ten­ants and de­clare every­thing - if you don't, mas­sive fines and penal­ties com­ing."

Giv­ing cal­cu­la­tions, Im­bert claimed "the land­lord tax" will be dou­ble - and in some cas­es five times - the PNM Gov­ern­ment's prop­er­ty tax. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in 2024, said in­creas­ing tax­es didn’t work, and had promised to re­duce tax­es.

“So, what go­ing on here?” he added.

On Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo’s point that Im­bert was a land­lord, Im­bert ad­mit­ted he is but said he was rais­ing the points for the poor, el­der­ly and “lit­tle peo­ple.”

Small man suf­fer un­der new mea­sures

Im­bert cit­ed oth­er new an­nounce­ments in the bill which he said would pe­nalise dri­vers and T&T's "small man."

He not­ed clause three, which will in­crease the penal­ty for raf­fles/char­i­ta­ble lot­ter­ies' non-com­pli­ance with the Gam­bling Act. He said non-an­nounce­ment of a raf­fle’s re­sults in the place where it is held will at­tract an in­creased fine from $750 to $30,000.

"...That wasn’t in the 2026 Bud­get,” Im­bert added.

He said he didn’t see Clause 10 in the Bud­get ei­ther. This will in­crease, from $200 to $500, the fine for not reg­is­ter­ing a ve­hi­cle trans­fer af­ter sev­en days of changed pos­ses­sion. He al­so not­ed the fine for op­er­at­ing a ve­hi­cle for a pur­pose it isn’t reg­is­tered will go from $8,000 to $12,000

“This tar­gets the small man, it’s aimed at the un­reg­is­tered taxis," he added.

An­oth­er item which is not in the Bud­get, Im­bert said, is a dou­bled fine for fail­ing to re­new dri­ver’s li­cences.

"That’s a com­mon thing with peo­ple, but it will now be $650.”

Im­bert list­ed oth­er claus­es in the bill which were in the Bud­get. This in­cludes the first in­crease to 19.2 per cen in NIS con­tri­bu­tion, where he said typ­i­cal wage earn­ers earn­ing $7,400 month­ly will have to con­tribute $443 month­ly ahead, with a sec­ond in­crease fol­low­ing.

Say­ing the cost of liv­ing would rise again, Im­bert not­ed an in­tro­duc­tion of tax­es on plas­tic bags/pack­ages, quadru­pled li­cence fees for gam­ing ma­chines, the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge for in­dus­tri­al/com­mer­cial cus­tomer - and in­creased fees for brew­ing beer and rum. "Re­gres­sive tax­a­tion! The more peo­ple you em­ploy for brew­ing, the more you’re taxed. Noth­ing to stim­u­late the econ­o­my, it’ll en­cour­age tax eva­sion," Im­bert added.