T&T will seek extension from the United States Government of the September

30 deadline for implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
This was the outcome of a 30-minute meeting yesterday between Government
and the Opposition to discuss the proposed legislation.
Following talks at the Parliament Building in Port-of-Spain, Finance Minister
Colm Imbert told reporters: What we are going to do now is speak to the US Treasury
to see if we can get an extension of time to allow a proper Joint Select Committee
(JSC) session to take place after the budget.
He said he was confident the request will be granted, adding that Government
had agreed to facilitate the Opposition with a proper JSC, not a rush job and not a
piecemeal job.
In an immediate response, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who did
not attend the hastily arranged meeting, said she was happy about the development. At
last Fridays sitting of the House of Representatives she had said the Opposition would
not be supporting the bill without amendments.
Persad-Bissessar said she had always felt there was sufficient time for
arrangements to be made in order to get good legislation passed rather than rushed
legislation.
She added: This concession by the Government shows that it has taken our
concerns on board and we welcome those concessions.
Persad-Bissessar said the Oppositions concerns were about invasion of
privacy, insufficient provisions for parliamentary scrutiny and for the draconian and
intrusive powers being given to the Minister of Finance in the bill.
Chief Whip Ganga Singh led the three-member Opposition team, which included
Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie and Naparima MP Rodney Charles. The
Government team comprised Imbert, Planning Minister Camille Robinson-Regis and
Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young.
Emerging from the meeting first, Opposition MP Tewarie said the proposal to
have the legislation put before a JSC had been rejected when it was first made by
Persad-Bissessar during her contribution to Fridays debate on the legislation.
Tewarie described the meeting as short but good and said Government was
given every commitment that we are prepared to work with them to ensure that the bill
is passed by the deadline. And we indicated that we wanted to do that through a Joint
Select Committee process. He said if that required parliamentarians to work over the
coming weekend, or at nights, we will work with them to make sure that we could pass
the bill in Parliament before September 30.
Minutes later Imbert and his team emerged and said there appeared to be some
miscommunication about the meeting as Government had been prepared to look at the
bill clause by clause. He said when the Opposition insisted on a JSC they were told of
the difficulty with that proposal as Government was not in favour of a rushed JSC
and wanted stakeholders such as the Bankers Association of T&T (BATT), the

Securities Exchange Commission, Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) and others to

participate.
I would have preferred we did it today but we are going to give the process to
the JSC, as was requested, and make sure that is done properly, rather than rushing it
through, he said.
Imbert denied that the Finance Minister will have access to personal banking
information under the proposed legislation.
Absolutely not and we are not going to allow that, he said.
The measure is expected to improve the exchange of tax information between
the two countries and ensure that US citizens earning income in this country pay their
taxes. The legislation provides for the Act to be administered by the Board of Inland
Revenue (BIR).