Investor Presentaiton
Budget overview (continued)
K
To effect a smooth transition into the new Revenue Authority, the Minister indicated that preparatory work is
currently underway at the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) in the areas of verifying the integrity of the taxpayer
database, risk management, voluntary compliance, timely filing of tax declaration, timely payment of taxes,
accurate reporting in declarations, effective tax dispute resolution and effective revenue management.
The desired efficiency the Government is seeking will undoubtedly have to be balanced with taxpayer rights. A
fundamental principle of an efficient and effective tax administrative framework is that it should be equitable,
predictable in the application of the law, accountable and transparent. Where the equal application of the tax
legislation is applied to all who fall under its scope, this should result in additional revenue collection by the
Government, negating the need to raise taxes. The establishment of the Revenue Authority would also be an
appropriate time to further digitise all aspects of customs and tax compliance. The Government may find that
significantly increasing the ease of tax compliance, will also result in the widening of the tax net.
Property Tax
Based on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics(*), recurrent taxes on
immovable property accounted on average for 0.64% of revenue from 1990 to 2009 (i.e. an average of
TT$67.07m) versus 0.01% of the revenue for the period 2016 to 2018 (i.e. an average of TT$3m per year for
the period). While the percentage of revenue represented by recurrent taxes on immovable property was never
significant, property tax has been on the agenda of this Administration and its reintroduction was recently
mentioned by Government in the context of the dire need for Government to increase its revenues.
What's Inside
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Territory Leader's message
Tax Leader's thoughts
Budget overview
Budget fundamentals - 2021
Historical economic data
Energy and energy related tax regime
Corporation tax
Value Added Tax & other indirect taxation
Personal Income tax
Stamp Duty
Summary of other measures
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PwC | Trinidad and Tobago 2021 national budget
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