Tancoo stands his ground on new gaming, liquor taxes

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is stand­ing by his de­ci­sion to amend the Liquor Li­cences Act to up­date the gam­ing tax fee and re­vise du­ties payable for liquor li­cences un­der the Sec­ond Sched­ule.

He spoke on the is­sue in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he pi­lot­ed the Fi­nance Bill 2025.

“Mr Speak­er, we are now in­creas­ing the an­nu­al gam­ing fees un­der Sec­tion 20B as de­scribed in the doc­u­ments be­fore you, in the mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try, which re­mains un­reg­u­lat­ed. I am ad­vised that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of these ma­chines have been in op­er­a­tion for over a decade and have not been reg­is­tered,” Tan­coo said.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Bars and Restau­rants and the Bar­keep­ers Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion have warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed in­crease of the Amuse­ment Gam­ing Tax from $6,000 to $25,000 per ma­chine per year could dev­as­tate small and medi­um-sized bar busi­ness­es.

They say the hike of more than 400 per cent would make le­gal op­er­a­tion im­pos­si­ble for hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ty-based bars, risk­ing clo­sures and thou­sands of job loss­es. Ac­cord­ing to the bill, the an­nu­al gam­ing tax would rise from $60,000 to $250,000, an in­crease of $190,000 per year, which they say ex­ceeds the to­tal net prof­it of many small and medi­um-sized es­tab­lish­ments.

In­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives warn this could shrink the le­gal gam­ing sec­tor, re­duce gov­ern­ment rev­enue from VAT, NIS, PAYE and liquor li­cence fees, and push ac­tiv­i­ty un­der­ground. For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so point­ed to oth­er mea­sures, in­clud­ing a first in­crease of NIS con­tri­bu­tions to 19.2 per cent, tax­es on plas­tic bags, quadru­pled gam­ing li­cence fees, high­er elec­tric­i­ty charges for com­mer­cial users, and in­creased fees for brew­ing beer and rum.

Tan­coo al­so ad­dressed Clause 3 of the act, which amends the Gam­bling and Bet­ting Act, Chap­ter 11:19, to mod­ernise the of­fence struc­ture and strength­en penal­ties for il­le­gal lot­tery ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Mr Speak­er, when we as­sumed of­fice, we were ad­vised by mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice that il­le­gal gam­bling lev­els were sig­nif­i­cant and it was al­so tied to a se­ries of oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing, tax eva­sion and pros­ti­tu­tion.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment had to take im­me­di­ate and in­formed ac­tion to crack down on il­le­gal prac­tices by fo­cus­ing on both pre­ven­tion and de­ter­rence.

“For too long, il­le­gal gam­bling has thrived due to low and out­dat­ed penal­ties which fail to re­flect the scale of the prob­lem and fail to ad­dress the crises that it caused,” Tan­coo said.

“By in­creas­ing penal­ties and mak­ing clear that these of­fences at­tract se­ri­ous cus­to­di­al sen­tences, this Gov­ern­ment is send­ing a sig­nal, an un­mis­tak­able sig­nal, Mr Speak­er. All il­le­gal lot­tery ac­tiv­i­ties will not be tol­er­at­ed.”

Op­po­si­tion MP for San Fer­nan­do East Bri­an Man­ning called the tax “ridicu­lous” dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion yes­ter­day.

“I saw mem­bers of that in­dus­try say in the me­dia this would be an ex­tinc­tion-lev­el event for their small, hon­est busi­ness­es with this dra­con­ian in­crease in tax­es,” Man­ning said.

“Even big busi­ness­es in south say­ing they have to shut down their busi­ness­es be­cause of tax­es on gam­ing ma­chines and tax­es on liquor at the bar.

“If the mem­ber had paid at­ten­tion in busi­ness school, he would know many of these busi­ness­es, restau­rants and so on, get prof­its from the bar. Not from the door.”

Man­ning said en­force­ment re­mained a ma­jor con­cern.

“Mis­ter Speak­er, this in­creas­es fines, penal­ties and the tax­es for il­le­gal lot­tery. Great. Mis­ter Speak­er, as we said ear­li­er, who is go­ing to en­force the law to en­sure that these tax­es are col­lect­ed? The min­is­ter said noth­ing about that. He thinks is mag­ic! He just writes this piece of pa­per here, make it law and the mon­ey go­ing to ap­pear. That is not the case,” Man­ning said.

Out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Gu­niss Seecha­ran, a mem­ber of the Bar Own­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, ques­tioned what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on bars. Seecha­ran said many bars al­ready strug­gle with high op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es and ac­cused the au­thor­i­ties of tar­get­ing one sec­tor re­peat­ed­ly.

He asked why oth­er high-earn­ing pro­fes­sions and in­sti­tu­tions were not be­ing tar­get­ed with sim­i­lar mea­sures. Seecha­ran said bar own­ers ac­cept­ed that al­co­hol prices were ris­ing, ex­pect­ed an in­crease in li­cence fees next year and were now fac­ing sharply high­er tax­es on gam­ing ma­chines.

He al­so ques­tioned whether larg­er casi­no in­ter­ests were in­flu­enc­ing pol­i­cy, adding that he could not say for cer­tain but re­mained con­cerned that bars were be­ing treat­ed as a pri­ma­ry rev­enue source.