OPPOSITION Senator Wade Mark complained on Friday that a new law was proposing to empower the Inland Revenue Division (IRD) in handing taxpayers' details to foreign authorities, but in violation of an individual's rights under the TT Constitution (section four and five.)
He spoke in the Senate on a bill which affects several finance regulations acts including the Tax Information Exchange Agreements Act 2020. The bill is the Miscellaneous Provisions (Trustees, Exchequer and Audit Act, the Minister of Finance (Incorporation) Act, Proceeds of Crime, Income Tax, Companies, Partnerships, Securities, Tax Information Exchange Agreements, the Non-Profit Organisations and Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters) Bill 2023.
He began by saying the Opposition generally supported measures to prevent the disguising of ill-gotten gains involving offences such as money-laundering, terrorist-financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Mark also lamented criminals using shell companies to hide their ownership of property and avert the payment of taxes such as stamp duty.
However, he warned that some provisions of the bill might breach the privacy rights of individuals in the TT Constitution.
Mark stormed, "Banking information is sacrosanct. It is confidential."
He argued that (in principal) nobody had the right to bypass an account-holder, obtain his banking details and forward it to someone else.
"If you are going to invade my privacy, you must get the requisite constitutional majority and it is not in the bill before us.
"I don't care if the Global Forum wants it. The Global Forum cannot tell us to undermine the rights of our people."
Mark specifically complained about the bill's clause 12. This proposes that where the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) complies with a foreign authority's request for a person's financial details, the board may be exempted from the legal requirement to notify the individual his details were supplied if such a notification could undermine an investigation under way by the foreign authority.
"It means you are giving the board a discretion," he hit, "and the board does not have that power to have a discretion on the rights of the citizen."
Mark compared the bill to a previous law passed in Parliament, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) 2017.
He said up until 2017, the existing law had said it was a breach of one's constitutional rights for TT's tax authorities to pass on your personal details without your knowledge or consent. However he complained that legislation passed by Parliament in 2017 pertaining to the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) had served to validate the board's unconstitutional behaviour.
The FATCA requires foreign financial institutions to report to the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS) information about financial accounts held by US taxpayers, or by foreign entities in which US taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest.
"You come back in 2023 to give the Board of Inland Revenue the same power?
"This
