Debate on the Trinidad and Tobago Revenue Authority (Repeal) Bill 2025 moved to the Upper House on Friday.
During his contribution to the debate, Minister of Labour, Small and Micro Enterprise Development, Leroy Baptiste, noted that citizens of Trinidad and Tobago rejected the TTRA on April 28th, instead voting for a change in policy.
“All the reports deal with basic simple issues and the issues caused deliberately in many instances by the political administration. Mr. President, they’re talking about understaffing; they’re talking about under-resourcing, a deliberate ill-treatment of the staff of BIR and Customs by that then-administration.”
Independent Senator Alicia Pauline Lalite-Ettienne wants the government to give the TTRA a chance. She noted that the recommendations contained within the TTRA’s Strategic Plan should be used to improve the system, not dismantle it.
“You’re repealing the Bill to go back and to take fresh ideas to try and put in a system that has failed us for decades. And many different governments that have tried couldn’t fix the problem. The TTRA is here. There was a strategic plan from 2023 to 2025. We are now in 2025. Review that.”
Opposition Senator Melanie Roberts-Radgman said our CARICOM neighbours — Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica — all have tax revenue systems and have recorded increases in revenue. She said even though their systems are not perfect, they work.
“Mr. President, the United States has the IRS, the UK has the HMRC, Guyana has GRA, Jamaica has TAJ, Barbados has BRA, Trinidad and Tobago has TTRA. And, as I said, Senator Dhanpaul would have taken us through several reports highlighting the excessive tax gap that we face right now. Senator Vieira, also not here, would have cautioned that a failure to modernise invites collapse. It’s really sad indeed, Mr. President, to see what the TTRA might become at this stage in the name of political folly.”
The Bill was previously passed in the Lower House with 27 votes in favour.