Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says there will be no re­funds for prop­er­ty tax al­ready paid, de­spite ear­li­er re­marks by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise.

Ear­li­er this month, Tan­coo said the tax would be re­pealed and that he be­lieved re­funds were in or­der for those who had al­ready paid.

How­ev­er, speak­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she nev­er promised that.

“You have to talk to Tan­coo. I think that’s the on­ly per­son who men­tioned re­funds, I have nev­er said that,” she said.

“Let Tan­coo tell me where he’s find­ing the mon­ey for re­funds, he’s the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.”

Tan­coo was in the room at the time, stand­ing just off to the side of the Prime Min­is­ter; and while he smiled, he did not com­ment on the PM’s state­ment.

When the PM was pressed by re­porters, who point­ed out that many were hop­ing for their mon­ey back, she laughed and said, “My hus­band paid too!”

Mean­while, Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed that her Gov­ern­ment in­tends to re­peal the prop­er­ty tax, de­scrib­ing it as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple for her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“We’ll re­peal it. It will take us time to put the law in place…we have al­ways been against the prop­er­ty tax in this present form,” she said.

On the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared the agency “not func­tion­al” and con­firmed Gov­ern­ment has no in­ten­tion of keep­ing it. The ex­ist­ing sys­tems at the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion will re­main, she said.

“Our job now is to strength­en the BIR… give it the pow­ers they need to col­lect rev­enue, which is their job.”

How­ev­er, she did not say ex­act­ly how that would be done.

Labour Min­is­ter and for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste, who led the charge against the TTRA in court and lost all the way to the Privy Coun­cil, al­so claimed vin­di­ca­tion.

He said, “All the in­tim­i­da­tion on­ly re­sult­ed in 32.6 per cent of work­ers ca­pit­u­lat­ing and agree­ing to join the TTRA.”

The PSA had, in a Ju­ly 2024 re­lease, ad­vised mem­bers not to se­lect any op­tions un­der Sec­tion 18 of the TTRA Act. The re­lease said there were no con­sul­ta­tions or agree­ment with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer on the terms and con­di­tions of trans­fer, and warned that with­out that in­for­ma­tion, work­ers should not re­spond to the gov­ern­ment’s re­quest.

When this was raised yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar cut in, “There were oth­er unions who caved in on oth­er mat­ters. So you must be a very pow­er­ful man if you were able to con­vince 70-plus.”

Bap­tiste added that work­ers were pres­sured in­to blind­ly choos­ing with­out ad­e­quate in­for­ma­tion.

“Any­one with self-re­spect ought not to have tak­en that de­ci­sion. And that is what, in fact, took place. The TTRA, with all the cer­e­mo­ny, has not got­ten off the ground be­cause they have not been able to man it.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned the po­lit­i­cal ori­gins of the TTRA and warned about its po­ten­tial mis­use.

“Why are we putting all our hopes in this TTRA? You all must re­mem­ber that was a high­ly po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion. The mem­bers were cho­sen by the min­is­ter to do what? To watch your tax re­turns. To weaponise that against you.”

When it was point­ed out that the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, now of her Gov­ern­ment, would now be choos­ing the mem­bers, she replied: “No, the min­is­ter must not choose, that’s the point. The min­is­ter must not have the au­thor­i­ty to choose peo­ple who have con­trol and have over­sight of your per­son­al da­ta as pri­va­cy.”

She said tax col­lec­tion must re­main a core state func­tion, not the work of a sep­a­rate cor­po­rate body.

“It should be like na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty... rev­enue col­lec­tion must re­main with­in the re­mit of the state, and not put in the hands of some en­ti­ty cre­at­ed by statute, cre­at­ed by com­pa­ny law.”