The bill to re­peal the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) Act passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives just af­ter 1:15 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, with 27 votes in favour—in­clud­ing sup­port from To­ba­go East MP David Thomas of the To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty, who vot­ed with the gov­ern­ment.

To­ba­go West MP Joel Samp­son was ab­sent for the vote. On the op­po­si­tion bench­es, 11 of the 13 Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs vot­ed against the bill. Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is were both ab­sent.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, in wrap­ping up the de­bate, seized on the ab­sences.

“Where is your leader?” he asked, teas­ing the op­po­si­tion leader for what he de­scribed as her si­lence dur­ing a crit­i­cal de­bate. “The leader of those on that bench has van­ished since 8pm.  She has not con­tributed, de­spite the fact that there have been  so many op­por­tu­ni­ties to­day. Not a word said in this Par­lia­ment.”

Tan­coo, who pi­lot­ed the bill, said the re­peal would al­low gov­ern­ment to rein­vest in the coun­try’s long-stand­ing rev­enue agen­cies in­stead of pur­su­ing what he de­scribed as a failed po­lit­i­cal ex­per­i­ment.

He called on the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port the re­peal and to “re­pent for the decade of hell they have put this coun­try through.” Tan­coo said the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) must be giv­en the tools it needs to car­ry out its man­date.

But for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert warned that re­peal­ing the TTRA would se­vere­ly lim­it the gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to raise rev­enue, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of what he de­scribed as un­sus­tain­able cam­paign promis­es.

“You want to spend $70 bil­lion a year and col­lect $50 bil­lion and run a $20 bil­lion deficit—you go ahead,” Im­bert said. He ar­gued that the TTRA was the on­ly re­al­is­tic op­tion for im­prov­ing tax col­lec­tion and ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of dis­man­tling it with­out a vi­able al­ter­na­tive.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the re­peal ful­filled a long-stand­ing com­mit­ment made to pub­lic of­fi­cers in the BIR and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, whose fu­tures un­der the TTRA were un­cer­tain.

“My gov­ern­ment gave as­sur­ances to the PSA and the pub­lic of­fi­cers… that as a pri­or­i­ty, we will re­peal the Act, and here we are to­day,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­ways op­posed the TTRA, both in and out­side Par­lia­ment, be­cause it threat­ened the in­de­pen­dence of tax col­lec­tion and en­force­ment.