Couva Chamber says mandatory tax filing could boost revenue

By Shas­tri Boodan

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce be­lieves manda­to­ry in­come tax fil­ing could bring mil­lions of dol­lars in ad­di­tion­al rev­enue to the Gov­ern­ment by bring­ing more in­di­vid­u­als and small busi­ness op­er­a­tors in­to the tax sys­tem.

The mea­sure was an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo dur­ing Mon­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026-2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the cham­ber’s Cam­den Road head­quar­ters on Mon­day, first vice-pres­i­dent Amit Dass de­scribed the pro­pos­al as a sig­nif­i­cant change to in­come tax mon­i­tor­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The an­nounce­ment ba­si­cal­ly made it manda­to­ry for every sin­gle per­son over the age of 18, I would say, to file tax­es be­cause the ter­mi­nol­o­gy he used was tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Dass said.

He said the mea­sure could gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue be­cause many peo­ple cur­rent­ly did not file tax re­turns.

“This would most like­ly lead to a large in­flow of cash for the Gov­ern­ment, giv­en that the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple do not file tax re­turns,” he said.

Dass said peo­ple op­er­at­ing small busi­ness­es would al­so have to com­ply with tax re­quire­ments.

“Peo­ple who may be do­ing small busi­ness­es, they will have to start pay­ing their tax, plain and sim­ple,” he said.

He com­pared the pro­posed sys­tem with that of the Unit­ed States, where in­di­vid­u­als are gen­er­al­ly re­quired to file tax re­turns, sub­ject to their cir­cum­stances.

Dass al­so point­ed to Gen­Tax, the soft­ware used by the Board of In­land Rev­enue to ad­min­is­ter and mon­i­tor the tax sys­tem. He said an up­grade was ex­pect­ed to im­prove tax ad­min­is­tra­tion and strength­en the au­thor­i­ties’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy cas­es for au­dit.

The cham­ber al­so called for an in­crease in nat­ur­al gas sup­plies to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and cre­ate jobs in the Cou­va-Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al belt.

Dass said this was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant giv­en the job loss­es the area had ex­pe­ri­enced in re­cent years. He said in­creased gas avail­abil­i­ty could sup­port in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion, en­cour­age busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and help re­store em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Mean­while, cham­ber sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Anisa Ali wel­comed im­prove­ments in for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions to busi­ness­es and changes to poli­cies gov­ern­ing ac­cess to for­eign cur­ren­cy through the Ex­im Bank.

Ali said the ad­just­ments had helped some small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es ob­tain larg­er for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions, al­low­ing them to im­port goods and sus­tain their op­er­a­tions.

She said the changes could im­prove the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment while strength­en­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­duc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for fraud.

Ali al­so wel­comed stricter re­quire­ments un­der the re­vised Ex­im Bank poli­cies, de­scrib­ing them as part of ef­forts to im­prove the sys­tem.

Pho­to: From left, CPLCC sec­re­tary Al­isha Mo­hamed-Stevens, first vice-pres­i­dent Amit Dass and sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Anisa Ali.