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In re­sponse to calls from Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) to be main­tained, Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste is stick­ing to his po­si­tion that the agency will not im­prove rev­enue col­lec­tion.

In his first con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate dur­ing the de­bate on the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (Re­peal) Bill, 2025, Bap­tiste cit­ed sev­er­al ex­pert re­ports which found no re­li­able ev­i­dence that se­mi-au­tonomous rev­enue agen­cies in­her­ent­ly per­form bet­ter. He said for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul had ref­er­enced var­i­ous re­ports high­light­ing dys­func­tions with­in the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED), in­clud­ing un­der-re­sourc­ing, un­der­staffing, and poor treat­ment of work­ers, is­sues he at­trib­uted to the ac­tions of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

Bap­tiste said the Op­po­si­tion’s claim of a $10 bil­lion tax gap was based on the false equiv­a­lence that the TTRA equalled greater rev­enue. Re­fer­ring to a 2007 re­port by Mau­reen Kidd and William Cran­dall on T&T’s tax sys­tem, he said there was no con­clu­sive ev­i­dence that rev­enue au­thor­i­ties con­sis­tent­ly out­per­formed tra­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment de­part­ments.