Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Sheer in­com­pe­tence by the Fi­nance Min­istry!

That is what UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al says is oc­cur­ring as the min­istry’s In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion can­not process cer­tain le­gal trans­ac­tions for the pub­lic due to a lack of 4x4 la­bels and stamps.

Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al added in a state­ment yes­ter­day, “It is mind-bog­gling that a gov­ern­ment which boasts about dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness and oth­er grandiose ac­com­plish­ments, which are heard of but nei­ther seen nor felt by cit­i­zens, can­not en­sure that ba­sic sup­plies need­ed for trans­act­ing busi­ness with the pub­lic is pro­cured in a time­ly man­ner.” 

The sen­a­tor cit­ed a Ju­ly 11 no­tice ad­dressed to “stake­hold­ers” from the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment (IRD).

“This demon­strates the com­plete in­com­pe­tence and in­ep­ti­tude of those in charge,” she added.

That no­tice stat­ed that the IRD’s Stamp Du­ty sec­tions at its Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do of­fices are “cur­rent­ly de­void of any stock of 4X4 la­bels/stamps” and the  di­vi­sion was un­able to fur­nish the pub­lic with these la­bels/stamps for deeds, in­stru­ments and oth­er per­ti­nent le­gal doc­u­ments. Those range from pow­ers of at­tor­ney to dif­fer­ent types of deeds and re­lease/par­tial re­lease of mort­gages.

The no­tice stat­ed that the la­bels/stamps were man­u­fac­tured in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and the IRD’s lo­cal sup­pli­er was in con­tact with the man­u­fac­tur­er to co­or­di­nate ship­ping and de­liv­ery. It added, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we do not have an es­ti­mat­ed date on which we can ex­pect the 4X4 la­bels/stamps in stock at this time.”

The no­tice al­so gave oth­er in­for­ma­tion on what the Stamp Du­ty sec­tion was do­ing, in­clud­ing ac­cept­ing work over the counter and re­turn­ing Pay­ment De­scrip­tion slips and con­tin­u­ing as­sess­ments for doc­u­ments/deeds/in­stru­ments that re­quire it.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert did not re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s query on the is­sue.  How­ev­er, a source said the mat­ter “will be re­solved soon.”

But Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al said, “The State, through its tax col­lec­tion agency, is now in a po­si­tion where it can­not process  trans­ac­tions due to no ‘la­bels/stamps’, and worse yet, no in­for­ma­tion on when they can ex­pect to re­ceive same from the sup­pli­er.”

“This means that sev­er­al im­por­tant le­gal in­stru­ments can­not be processed and reg­is­tered for the fore­see­able fu­ture and the av­er­age cit­i­zen or per­son seek­ing to trans­act busi­ness linked to con­veyances or mort­gages in this coun­try is sim­ply dis­placed and at the mer­cy of the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s in­ep­ti­tude.

“The in­di­vid­ual who has a date by which he must con­clude his mort­gage trans­ac­tion to move in­to a new home might very well find him­self home­less as a re­sult of this in­com­pe­tence. The el­der­ly per­son who is bedrid­den and re­quires a proxy through which to do bank­ing and oth­er busi­ness can­not reg­is­ter a pow­er of at­tor­ney to fa­cil­i­tate same and will face what­ev­er con­se­quences may flow,” Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al added.

She said the min­istry should ur­gent­ly meet with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT)  and the BIR and find an im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion “... For this dis­as­ter of its own mak­ing. It’s painful­ly ob­vi­ous that the po­lit­i­cal ve­hi­cle that is the TTRA and the im­po­si­tion of prop­er­ty tax is the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion and not the bur­dens faced by or­di­nary cit­i­zens or the long-term im­pact of PNM’s mis­man­age­ment of the coun­try.”

LATT’s sec­re­tary, Bi­jili Lal­la, in a no­tice to mem­bers, said that fol­low­ing mem­bers’ com­ments, the LATT sent a Ju­ly 11 let­ter to the su­per­vi­sor of the Stamp Du­ty Sec­tion to in­quire about the un­avail­abil­i­ty of stamps. Lal­la stat­ed LATT was in­formed that pay­ments can still be made to the BIR, how­ev­er in­di­vid­u­als were be­ing asked to re­turn to have stamp du­ty af­fixed ac­cord­ing­ly. LATT is await­ing an up­date from the de­part­ment, she stat­ed.