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Friday, February 28, 2025

Public servants get July 31 deadline to sign on to new Revenue Authority

... Workers will not be placed until Privy Council ruling in October

by

224 days ago
20240719

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic ser­vants at the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) will have to de­cide whether they wish to join the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) while the Privy Coun­cil weighs in on the fi­nal ap­peal over its op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion.

Af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions on the sub­stan­tive ap­peal at the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court Build­ing in Lon­don, Eng­land, yes­ter­day morn­ing, five Law Lords were asked by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to con­sid­er a stay of a Ju­ly 31 dead­line giv­en by the Min­istry of Fi­nance for the work­ers to de­cide their fu­ture em­ploy­ment po­si­tion.

The un­der­tak­ing giv­en by the min­istry is that the work­ers will not be im­me­di­ate­ly placed based on their de­ci­sions, un­til the ap­peal is de­ter­mined when the new law term opens at the be­gin­ning of Oc­to­ber.

In mak­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, who rep­re­sent­ed the PSA, not­ed that there was a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion over a stay grant­ed by the Court of Ap­peal af­ter his client’s ap­peal was re­ject­ed on June 4. He not­ed that while the par­ties ini­tial­ly be­lieved that the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion was stayed, it was sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed that the Ap­peal Court’s stay was re­lat­ed to its de­ci­sion to dis­miss the ap­peal.

“By ask­ing them to pick an op­tion, it does place pub­lic of­fi­cers in an un­en­vi­able po­si­tion,” Ram­lo­gan said, as he called on the pan­el to pre­serve the sta­tus quo. Ram­lo­gan’s con­cerns were re­ject­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who led the le­gal team for the au­thor­i­ty and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“We are ask­ing for them to ex­er­cise the op­tion, but noth­ing would hap­pen, on­ly in­ter­nal process­es,” Mendes said. “I don’t un­der­stand what trau­ma peo­ple would ex­pe­ri­ence by say­ing I want to go over to the TTRA or re­tire.” 

UK Supreme Court pres­i­dent Lord Robert Reed, who led the pan­el, said that he and his col­leagues were con­tent with the un­der­tak­ing.

“We would ac­cept the un­der­tak­ing rather than or­der­ing a stay,” Lord Reed said. He as­sured the par­ties that the case would get pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion, with he and his col­leagues de­lib­er­at­ing dur­ing the court’s va­ca­tion pe­ri­od to pro­vide a swift judg­ment.

“We ap­pre­ci­ate this case is a mat­ter of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic im­por­tance, and that is why we ex­pe­dit­ed the hear­ing,” Lord Reed said.

PSA ad­vis­es work­ers

to com­ply

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day evening, the PSA in­di­cat­ed that it was sat­is­fied that the un­der­tak­ing would pro­tect its mem­bers and ad­vised af­fect­ed work­ers to com­ply.

“In the cir­cum­stances, work­ers may se­lect an op­tion on the clear un­der­stand­ing that there is ab­solute­ly no prej­u­dice what­so­ev­er be­cause noth­ing can be done un­til the Privy Coun­cil de­liv­ers its judg­ment,” it said.

Stat­ing that it was anx­ious about the out­come of the ap­peal, the union said that its of­fi­cials would is­sue bul­letins and vis­it the of­fices of the IRD and the CED next week to ad­dress its mem­bers’ con­cerns. In the ap­peal, the PSA is con­tend­ing that a High Court Judge and the Court of Ap­peal got it wrong when they re­ject­ed the case brought by its mem­ber and cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­ris­sa Dho­ray.

The PSA and Dho­ray chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of the leg­is­la­tion, which seeks to re­place the IRD and CED with the TTRA. The law­suit specif­i­cal­ly fo­cused on Sec­tion 18 of the T&T Rev­enue Act, which was pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on April 24 last year. The sec­tion gave pub­lic ser­vants three months to make a de­ci­sion on their fu­ture em­ploy­ment up­on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the TTRA.

Af­fect­ed pub­lic ser­vants have the choice to vol­un­tar­i­ly re­sign from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ac­cept a trans­fer to the TTRA, or be trans­ferred to an­oth­er of­fice in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

The im­ple­men­ta­tion was ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to take place in Au­gust last year, but was de­ferred by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to De­cem­ber based on the case. It was sub­se­quent­ly de­ferred to March to fa­cil­i­tate the ap­peal be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

Dho­ray’s lawyers con­tend­ed that cer­tain seg­ments of the leg­is­la­tion are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as they seek to in­ter­fere with the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of pub­lic ser­vants cur­rent­ly as­signed to the CED and IRD. They al­so claimed that the Gov­ern­ment did not have the pow­er to del­e­gate its tax rev­enue col­lec­tion du­ties.

In its de­fence, the Gov­ern­ment has claimed that tax col­lec­tion could be del­e­gat­ed once guide­lines are pro­vid­ed by Par­lia­ment. In No­vem­ber of last year, Jus­tice West­min James dis­missed the case. While he not­ed that tax­a­tion was a key source of a gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue and that the process of as­sess­ing and col­lect­ing tax­es was es­sen­tial, he al­so not­ed that there are cur­rent­ly in­stances of pri­vate en­ti­ties be­ing able to col­lect tax­es on the Gov­ern­ment’s be­half.

He al­so point­ed out that sev­er­al for­eign coun­tries have set up sim­i­lar spe­cial­ist bod­ies to deal with the “com­plex­i­ties” of mod­ern tax­a­tion. In up­hold­ing Jus­tice James’ judg­ment in May, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that while en­force­ment is a “core gov­ern­ment func­tion” that can­not be del­e­gat­ed, the as­sess­ment and col­lec­tion of tax are not.

“We ob­serve that the as­sess­ment which the au­thor­i­ty is em­pow­ered to con­duct is, in re­al­i­ty, an arith­meti­cal stage of the process and does not con­fer on the as­ses­sor any co­er­cive pow­er,” Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, who wrote the judg­ment, said.

“Col­lec­tion is al­so not co­er­cive and is gen­er­al­ly vol­un­tary,” she added.

Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er not­ed that en­force­ment would still be per­formed by pub­lic ser­vants, who fall un­der the re­mit of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. “We there­fore hold that there was no breach of the im­plied term that core func­tions should re­main un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the PSC,” she said.

Dho­ray was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Robert Strang, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, Natasha Bis­ram, Vishaal Siewsaran and Ganesh Sa­roop.

The au­thor­i­ty and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Si­mon de la Bastide, SC, and Lianne Thomas.


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