SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) is seek­ing an ur­gent meet­ing with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo fol­low­ing what it de­scribes as an overnight de­ci­sion by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to im­pose tax­es on mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles pre­vi­ous­ly be­lieved to be tax ex­empt.

TTA­DA Pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah said the as­so­ci­a­tion was in­formed that the Cus­toms Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee had ruled cer­tain mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles should no longer be treat­ed as hy­brids for tax pur­pos­es.

How­ev­er, Bab­wah ar­gued the is­sue was not one of clas­si­fi­ca­tion but a sud­den re­ver­sal of a pol­i­cy deal­ers had re­lied on when im­port­ing ve­hi­cles.

"The Cus­toms has made a rul­ing. The Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee has made a rul­ing and they clas­si­fied these ve­hi­cles not as a hy­brid. But the is­sue is not re­al­ly clas­si­fi­ca­tion. We were guid­ed by a le­gal no­tice which stat­ed that mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles were ex­empt from tax­es, and overnight they made the de­ci­sion to start charg­ing tax­es on these ve­hi­cles," Bab­wah said.

He claimed deal­ers have ve­hi­cles at the port and oth­ers that had al­ready been cleared by Cus­toms but whose re­lease doc­u­ments were with­held pend­ing pay­ment of the new tax­es.

"We have ve­hi­cles in the port. We have ve­hi­cles that came in and were cleared, but the doc­u­ments were not giv­en to us. They held the doc­u­ments and want­ed to charge tax­es on those ve­hi­cles al­so, al­though they had al­ready been cleared to our com­pound. This is very un­fair be­cause we were guid­ed by a le­gal no­tice that showed what was clas­si­fied as a mild hy­brid ve­hi­cle and that those ve­hi­cles would have had the tax ex­emp­tion," he said.

Bab­wah said he would im­me­di­ate­ly write to both the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise re­quest­ing an emer­gency meet­ing.

"We are call­ing on the Min­is­ter and the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms. I'm send­ing a let­ter to the Min­is­ter now to have an ex­treme­ly ur­gent meet­ing to dis­cuss this mat­ter be­cause you can­not just bring a tax overnight, re­clas­si­fy some­thing overnight and charge peo­ple tax­es ret­ro­spec­tive­ly on these ve­hi­cles," he said.

While Bab­wah was un­cer­tain whether the de­ci­sion had been tak­en sole­ly by Cus­toms or in con­sul­ta­tion with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, he not­ed Cus­toms falls un­der the Min­istry's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He warned the move could sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease ve­hi­cle prices. Ac­cord­ing to Bab­wah, a mild hy­brid ve­hi­cle such as the Toy­ota Taisor, which cur­rent­ly re­tails for about TT$160,000, could at­tract be­tween TT$40,000 and TT$45,000 in ad­di­tion­al tax­es.

"The new price would be about TT$200,000 or more," he said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is await­ing a re­sponse from the Min­istry of Fi­nance as deal­ers seek clar­i­ty on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new tax pol­i­cy and its im­pact on ve­hi­cles al­ready im­port­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous tax ex­emp­tion.