What FATCA benefit for TT?

Various countries have been co-operating with the US on a voluntary basis, providing levels of available information back to the US under non-binding arrangements of the so-called Inter- Governmental Agreement for FATCA.

Presumably, this information is retrieved and shared without laws being flouted.

Here at home, the Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIE) Bill under consideration for enactment is meant to create binding mechanisms within our own jurisdiction, to access and manage information legally and be able to enforce that.

It would be essential to expand the TT Government’s investigative needs while protecting it in relation to its own citizens, with the removal of guaranteed constitutional rights. FATCA then is about the prosecution of US tax evasion and crime within the US jurisdictional regime. What the benefit to TT has been and would be still has to be shown.

Why should TT surrender more of our own rights at home? How much is the US contributing to defray the cost of this bureaucracy? Should Americans who own TT property internationally of whatever nature be taxed by TT ? And in that case, how will the US be accountable for returning equivalent information, on its own citizens and ours, to TT ? As anyone who has been audited by the Board of Inland Revenue can attest, the Government is not hindered in powers available to it already, in assessing wealth on an objective basis and enforcing the tax code here at home.

So another issue would be: are there laws in the US that obligate the US to return information to TT in the same way as the proposed TIE? And, does the proposed TIE address the problem of jurisdictional priority in the event TT has claims to try any US citizen, or Trinidadian? Actually, there is no formal treaty here between TT and the US and no real reciprocal obligation from the US to our nation.

Finally, will the TT banking system lose competitiveness in the evolving international banking system being bound to FATCA?

ELIAS GALY via email