Govt changes BIR board structure; PNM warns of political control

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

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Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has an­nounced that the Board of In­land Rev­enue will be re­con­sti­tut­ed and ex­pand­ed to nine com­mis­sion­ers as part of amend­ments to the In­come Tax Act.

The new board will in­clude six pub­lic of­fi­cers from the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion, up from the pre­vi­ous five. It will al­so now in­clude an at­tor­ney with at least ten years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, an ac­coun­tant with at least ten years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, and a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary from the Min­istry of Fi­nance serv­ing as an ex of­fi­cio com­mis­sion­er.

Tan­coo yes­ter­day told Par­lia­ment that the Pres­i­dent will ap­point the pro­fes­sion­al mem­bers and the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, while the chair­man will con­tin­ue to be se­lect­ed from among the pub­lic of­fi­cers of the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion.

“This new struc­ture strength­ens the pro­fes­sion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty of the board, en­sures the pres­ence of spe­cialised le­gal and ac­count­ing ex­per­tise and aligns the gov­er­nance of our tax ad­min­is­tra­tion with best prac­tice,” he said.

The leg­is­la­tion al­so in­tro­duces a new gov­er­nance frame­work through the in­ser­tion of sec­tions 3A to 3E of the act. These pro­vi­sions re­quire the board to meet month­ly, keep prop­er min­utes and de­ci­sions, and es­tab­lish com­mit­tees in key ar­eas such as risk man­age­ment, au­dit and tax­pay­er com­pli­ance.

New con­flict of in­ter­est rules will al­so ap­ply, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of an of­fence car­ry­ing a penal­ty of $500,000 and two years’ im­pris­on­ment for wil­ful non-dis­clo­sure. The board will al­so be re­quired to sub­mit an an­nu­al re­port on its ac­tiv­i­ties to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, which will al­so be laid in Par­lia­ment.

“Over­all, we are con­fi­dent, Mr Speak­er, that these re­forms im­prove over­sight, ef­fi­cien­cy, in­tegri­ty in de­ci­sion-mak­ing and pro­mote trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty through­out the tax sys­tem,” Tan­coo said.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Bri­an Man­ning, a for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, re­ject­ed the changes and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to politi­cise the board.

“Clause 15 of the bill would amend the In­come Tax Act, Chap­ter 75:01, to re­vise the struc­ture and pro­ce­dures of the Board of In­land Rev­enue. Mis­ter Speak­er, when I say re­vise the struc­ture and pro­ce­dures of the Board of In­land Rev­enue, they ba­si­cal­ly mean in­stalling their po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees on the Board of In­land Rev­enue, an­oth­er sup­pos­ed­ly in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion,” Man­ning said.

“This Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is ar­ro­gat­ing pow­ers un­to him­self, un­to him­self, Mis­ter Speak­er, that he has no busi­ness do­ing,” he added.

Man­ning ques­tioned the min­is­ter’s in­ten­tions, ask­ing, “What does the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance want to ac­cess at the Board of In­land Rev­enue?”

He al­so ref­er­enced the now-de­funct Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, say­ing, “We had the TTRA, Mis­ter Speak­er, which was sup­posed to de­moc­ra­tise tax col­lec­tion in this coun­try. They de­stroyed that. They said that it was po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced… The Privy Coun­cil said some­thing en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent.”

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of in­con­sis­ten­cy, adding, “So af­ter scrap­ping that in­sti­tu­tion, claim­ing that it was po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced, here we have the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance at­tempt­ing to force two of his po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees on­to the pre­vi­ous­ly in­de­pen­dent Board of In­land Rev­enue.”