RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) be­gins to seize the ac­counts of er­rant busi­ness own­ers for un­paid tax­es to­talling some 15 bil­lion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) board chair­man Nigel Ed­wards has ad­vised tax­pay­ers to get their tax­es in or­der.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­wards em­pha­sised that due to nu­mer­ous tax amnesties in the past, there was now no ex­cuse for tax eva­sion.

He al­so re­vealed that once the TTRA be­comes op­er­a­tional, it will con­tin­ue the BIR’s mis­sion to re­coup un­paid tax­es.

Last Thurs­day, the BIR seized the ac­counts of the T&T Ra­dio Net­work (TTRN), the par­ent com­pa­ny of ra­dio sta­tions 96.1 We FM, STAR 94.7 and 107.7 Mu­sic for Life, owned by An­tho­ny “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On, over $34 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es.

With­out com­ment­ing di­rect­ly on Lin On’s case, Ed­wards yes­ter­day said, “There are stud­ies that ar­tic­u­late that there is a tax col­lec­tion gap as high as $15 bil­lion. Our ob­jec­tive is to close that gap with­in the first three years by in­creas­ing tax col­lec­tion by $10 bil­lion, and that is an achiev­able ob­jec­tive.”

He added, “We will be look­ing for­ward to all tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­port­ing us in get­ting to that be­cause it is the fair and eq­ui­table way to deal with rev­enue col­lec­tion.”

Ed­wards as­sured that the BIR has mech­a­nisms in place for busi­ness own­ers fac­ing cash flow is­sues.

“Giv­en the cash flow re­al­i­ties that busi­ness­es have, in­clud­ing post-COVID re­al­i­ties, I am cer­tain there are mech­a­nisms in place at the In­land Rev­enue and TTRA that will al­low com­pa­nies to ful­fil their statu­to­ry tax oblig­a­tions with­out be­ing un­rea­son­ably bur­den­some on the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue. There are mech­a­nisms in place that will al­low the bur­den to be spread over a pe­ri­od of time,” he said.

Ed­wards al­so said he was not aware of any spe­cial dri­ve to go af­ter large cor­po­ra­tions.

“Part of the role of the TTRA is to max­imise the col­lec­tion of tax­es le­git­i­mate­ly due from all sources,” he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that av­er­age cit­i­zens bear the bur­den of tax­es.

“I would like to call for more peo­ple to be will­ing to share the bur­den. Tax­es are paid based on earn­ings, so I want to call for a greater will­ing­ness for peo­ple to pay their fair share of tax­es be­cause they have al­ready earned,” he said.

Ed­wards stressed that er­rant busi­ness own­ers had enough time to pay their tax­es.

“Hav­ing is­sued a num­ber of amnesties in the past, there is now very lit­tle ex­cuse for busi­ness­es or in­di­vid­u­als to not pay their fair share of tax­es,” he said.

Ed­wards could not spec­i­fy how many busi­ness own­ers were evad­ing tax­es but not­ed that the TTRA’s strate­gic plan in­cludes col­lab­o­ra­tion to iden­ti­fy er­rant busi­ness own­ers.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste said the Gov­ern­ment was re­spon­si­ble for in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the BIR due to un­filled va­can­cies.

How­ev­er, he agreed that go­ing af­ter large cor­po­ra­tions was a step in the right di­rec­tion.

“There has been a hin­drance to the BIR, where it was not al­lowed to do its work be­cause of man­pow­er short­ages, and then politi­cians blame the BIR for fail­ing to meet pro­ject­ed rev­enue from tax­a­tion with­out own­ing up to the need to fill va­can­cies at the BIR,” he said.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh al­so ex­pressed sup­port for the BIR’s en­force­ment of tax laws.

“The law of the land is that if you work, you must pay the State; the gov­ern­ment is the col­lec­tor of tax­es. Sev­er­al amnesties were giv­en in the past by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, and we would have ex­pect­ed law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­men to pay their dues and debts,” Singh said.

He not­ed that en­forc­ing tax laws equal­ly across all busi­ness sizes would lev­el the play­ing field, re­liev­ing pres­sure on small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) that face strin­gent bank­ing sec­tor re­quire­ments.

How­ev­er, Singh added that the Min­istry of Fi­nance should al­so pay VAT re­funds on a time­ly ba­sis for those busi­ness own­ers who pay their tax­es.