Mem­ber­ship shop­ping com­pa­ny PriceS­mart Clubs Ltd has won a law­suit against the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) over its move to change from its pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cept­ed method­ol­o­gy for con­sid­er­ing for­eign ex­change loss­es when cal­cu­lat­ing cor­po­ra­tion tax.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Wednes­day, High Court Judge, Vigel Paul, ruled that the BIR breached the com­pa­ny’s le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion by not ac­cept­ing the method­ol­o­gy it had pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved for the cal­cu­la­tions.

The com­pa­ny, which op­er­ates four clubs in Trinidad, filed the case af­ter the BIR sought to re­assess its tax re­turns for 2016 in late 2022. The re­assess­ment was based on the BIR re­ject­ing the method­ol­o­gy for for­eign ex­change gains and loss­es, which it re­solved with the com­pa­ny be­tween 2004 and 2007 and ac­cept­ed for tax re­turns up to 2015.