The 11th-hour wheeling and dealing between the PNM and the UNC is not worth any of the cheap political points they may have scored on each other because it is at the expense of citizens who will be hit hard in their pockets if the deadline is missed, not to mention the looming financial pain for local businesses of all sizes.
The political war currently being waged over the Tax Information and Exchange Agreement (TIEA) Bill, 2016, is downright dangerous. Government and Opposition are busy kicking around this crucial Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) legislation like some kind of political football, recklessly playing around with the September 30 deadline for compliance to the peril of ordinary citizens all across this country.
This is the one issue that those currently holding elected office in T&T should not treat lightly. They can’t afford to—not with the country edging closer and closer to the very punitive 30 per cent withholding tax that will be imposed once the deadline for being compliant is missed.
The 11th-hour wheeling and dealing between the PNM and the UNC is not worth any of the cheap political points they may have scored on each other because it is at the expense of citizens who will be hit hard in their pockets if the deadline is missed, not to mention the looming financial pain for local businesses of all sizes.
There will be dire consequences for a sizeable chunk of the population unless the Government and the Opposition immediately put aside their differences and work to pass the TIEA Bill before it is too late.
If they keep up with the current FATCA impasse, they will be equally to blame for the financial calamities that will be visited upon this country.
The T&T economy, already in a tailspin due to low prices and reduced production in the energy sector, cannot handle the additional shock of serious negative consequences for non-compliance with FATCA.
As it now stands, the country’s financial system is in jeopardy. T&T will become uncompetitive because trade services essential to many public and private sector businesses, as well as individual citizens, may be restricted.
There is also the very real and troubling prospect of severe limits on everyday banking services such as remittances, credit card and wire transactions, and other services that require access to the US financial system.
That reality cannot be ignored by the Opposition who seem to be taking advantage of the fact that the legislation requires a special three-fifths majority which the Government does not have—the PNM has 23 members in the House of Representatives, but 26 votes are required to pass the Bill.
There is also the fact that Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her UNC team were in power in 2010 when the FATCA law was passed in the United States. They are yet to fully explain why they—with the special majority they held while in office—allowed five years to elapse without passage of the legislation.
The Government, for its part, also needs to explain why it did not move any faster to debate and pass the Bill during the first year in office.
While 12 months ago, newly elected to office, they faced a tighter deadline of September 30, 2015, it looks like they wasted the one-year extension they were granted then by US authorities.
Now, one year later, neither side can ignore the increasing and urgent appeals being made by various private sector organisations to urgently debate and pass the TIEA Bill.
Indeed, yesterday’s unprecedented joint press conference by the country’s main business chambers and associations, should inspire an immediate and positive bipartisan response to bring T&T back from the brink of the FATCA abyss.
However, up to late yesterday, neither side seemed willing to budge from their untenable positions.
Today, with the opening of the new parliamentary term, debate and passage of the TIEA Bill should have been the first item on the legislative agenda as a matter of urgent national importance.
After all, the possibility of another extension from the US seems less and less likely as the clock winds down to September 30.