Finance Bill passes in Senate without Opposition support

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

The Fi­nance Bill was passed in the Sen­ate, but with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­sirée Mur­ray ab­stained and was the lone per­son on the in­de­pen­dent bench not to sup­port the Bill.

The Fi­nance Bill gives ef­fect to mea­sures an­nounced in the Na­tion­al Bud­get read by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo on Oc­to­ber 13. It al­so in­tro­duces sev­er­al new or ad­just­ed levies and tax­es.

The Fi­nance Bill in­tro­duced sev­er­al new rev­enue mea­sures, in­clud­ing a rental in­come sur­charge, an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge for com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al users, and a sin­gle-use plas­tics tax. It al­so raised du­ties on rum, spir­its, beer, and cig­a­rettes.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the bill sub­stan­tial­ly in­creased fines and penal­ties for a range of traf­fic of­fences, a move the Gov­ern­ment said is in­tend­ed to pro­mote safer dri­ving and de­ter reck­less be­hav­iour on the na­tion’s roads.

The bill al­so changes the com­po­si­tion of the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR). Pre­vi­ous­ly, it was made up of five com­mis­sion­ers, all of whom were pub­lic ser­vice of­fi­cers from with­in the tax ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Now the board will be ex­pand­ed and re­con­sti­tut­ed. The Fi­nance Bill ex­pands the Board of the BIR from five to nine mem­bers. It will now in­clude six pub­lic of­fi­cers from with­in the BIR, an at­tor­ney with at least ten years of ex­pe­ri­ence, an ac­coun­tant with a sim­i­lar lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, and a Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, who will serve in an ex of­fi­cio ca­pac­i­ty.

The Op­po­si­tion has slammed this as po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, with for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert warn­ing that these “po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees” will be able to ac­cess pri­vate cit­i­zens’ tax in­for­ma­tion.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s de­bate, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis al­so raised con­cerns about changes to the BIR board.

Sen­a­tor Lewis said, “I have con­cerns on the new com­mis­sion­ers and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance be­ing on the board. The in­for­ma­tion that goes to the board is high­ly con­fi­den­tial, be they set­tle­ments, be they agree­ments, be they tax dis­putes, be they sim­ply records.”

He added, “And I cer­tain­ly have enor­mous re­gard for the peo­ple in the Min­istry of Fi­nance that I've met, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a se­nior lev­el. But I am some­what un­com­fort­able with Min­istry of Fi­nance peo­ple be­ing on the boards. There's an old phrase, you can­not run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.”

In wind­ing up the de­bate late last evening, Plan­ning Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh said the law does not pre­vent a pub­lic ser­vant from al­so be­ing ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion of the at­tor­ney or ac­coun­tant.

“There­fore, those per­sons can al­so come from the pub­lic sec­tor. This is sim­i­lar to the com­po­si­tion of the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, pur­suant to Sec­tion 10.1.A of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act. Sec­ond­ly, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, pur­suant to Sec­tion 4.2 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, which both re­quires an at­tor­ney at law of at least 10 years stand­ing.”

Fur­ther­more, Swarats­ingh said these board mem­bers, by law, can­not di­vulge pri­vate in­for­ma­tion.

“These per­sons, even if they were to come from the pri­vate sec­tor, would all be sub­ject to the Sec­tion 4 of the se­cre­cy re­quire­ments. Sim­i­lar­ly, they would al­so be sub­ject to the same crim­i­nal of­fences if they were to breach the re­quire­ment. And fi­nal­ly, the in­tro­duc­tion of the Dis­clo­sure of In­ter­est re­quire­ments fur­ther safe­guards the board and its de­ci­sions from sit­u­a­tions where com­mis­sion­ers are con­flict­ed.”

The Op­po­si­tion had slammed the Fi­nance Bill as a “tax at­tack” on the peo­ple.

Ear­li­er in the de­bate, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne said, "Mr Pres­i­dent, the min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the econ­o­my did not give any de­fence for a num­ber of these ill-con­ceived mea­sures, which are de­signed to in­flict hard­ship on the peo­ple of this coun­try. This is a wicked Gov­ern­ment, bereft of ideas, lack­ing in vi­sion, and no mil­i­tary radar will as­sist them in find­ing their way."