By Sue-Ann Wayow
CITIZENS of Trinidad and Tobago do not expect any tax relief during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Minister of Finance Colm Imbert told the country on Monday, “It is unreasonable for people to ask for tax relief and then at the same time ask for Covid relief.”
Imbert, speaking at a Ministry of Finance virtual video conference, said it was the taxpayers’ dollars that were currently providing monies for relief efforts estimated this time to be between $70million to $80million.
From last year to date, Government spent approximately $5billion in relief efforts, Imbert said.
The minister gave a breakdown of Government’s expenditure plans to provide Covid relief during the second major lockdown period as well as projected spending for vaccines.
Imbert said the number one priority for his ministry was ensuring that all hospitals and medical centres were fully equipped to deal with the deadly virus.
And if the projected $80million needed to be borrowed to provide relief, “so be it,” he added.
When asked about the possibility of tax exemption, Imbert replied, “ For every dollar that the Government gives up in waives of taxes, that’s a dollar less to provide for Covid-19.
“Money does not drop from the sky. The Government’s money is tax revenue. If the Government gives up tax revenue $100million in tax revenue for example, that’s $100million less to give to people in terms of relief so I am afraid we cannot relax the taxes at this point in time. We need as a country to collect as much revenue as we can, we are already down significantly.”
He reminded the public that the Government was short of $2billion taxes for the year already which had to be borrowed.
Imbert added that while other countries like the US can waiver taxes and provide Covid relief, T&T could not because the US dollar was a reserved currency, a currency that other countries want.
“We have to rely on tax collection to give financial assistance to those most in need,” Imbert said.
