Trinidad and Tobago’s 2026 Finance Bill has sparked fierce political pushback, with opposition lawmakers warning that broad-based penalty increases across multiple industries and regulatory frameworks will impose new, burdensome costs on ordinary citizens, small business owners, and industry operators nationwide.
Speaking at a press briefing held Tuesday at the Red House (Trinidad and Tobago’s Parliament building) in Port of Spain, opposition MP and former finance minister Colm Imbert publicly outlined details of the 31-clause bill, confirming that the opposition had received official advance notice of the legislative text. Imbert revealed that more than half of the bill’s provisions target existing penalties across a wide range of national laws, with hikes ranging from a 50 percent jump to a staggering 400 percent increase for select offenses.
One of the most controversial adjustments falls to minor, unprescribed offenses under the Motor Launches Act, the legislation governing small commercial vessels including local party boats. The baseline penalty for these unspecified violations is set to jump from TT$2,000 to TT$7,500 — a 275 percent increase that Imbert argues will punish small operators for trivial, accidental oversights.
“What is the basis for this extreme jump? How do you justify moving from $2,000 to $7,500 for an offense that isn’t even clearly defined?” Imbert questioned, noting the penalty hike directly contradicts the current administration’s earlier campaign pledges to reduce burdensome fines and regulatory penalties for citizens and businesses.
Beyond the Motor Launches Act, Imbert pointed to sweeping penalty increases across more than eight additional pieces of legislation, including the Gambling and Betting Act, Forest Act, Sawmills Act, Conservation of Wildlife Act, Animal Importation Act, Registration of Clubs Act, Pharmacy Board regulations, and the Pesticides Act. He emphasized that every proposed adjustment carries a minimum 50 percent penalty increase, calling the cumulative measure a deliberate pattern of punitive cost hikes that targets everyday Trinbagonians.
“This is what the government is doing right now: every week, it’s new fines, new increases, new costs, all to punish ordinary people,” Imbert said. “It was critical that we bring this to the public’s attention so people understand exactly what they’re facing.”
Imbert also doubled down on criticism of the administration’s troubled new Landlord Business Surcharge policy, arguing that repeated extensions to the mandatory landlord registration deadline are clear proof of the policy’s fundamental flaws and the government’s administrative incompetence.
When the policy was first introduced in December, Imbert predicted the government would be forced to extend the original registration deadline due to unworkable structural flaws. He has now correctly predicted two extensions — pushing the deadline from March 31 to May 30, then again to June 30 — and says a third extension is all but guaranteed.
The policy requires an estimated 100,000 landlords across the country to complete in-person registration and verification interviews with the Inland Revenue Division (IRD), after the agency eliminated the option for document drop-off submissions. Imbert warned that the IRD lacks the operational capacity to process such a large volume of applications in a reasonable timeline, creating massive administrative backlogs that will leave thousands of landlords in regulatory limbo.
“How on earth is the IRD supposed to process 100,000 in-person interviews and registration applications? There simply isn’t the staff or infrastructure to pull this off,” he said.
He also raised serious privacy and public safety concerns about the policy’s requirement for a public, searchable register of landlord and tenant information. Imbert argued that making this personal data publicly accessible constitutes a clear violation of privacy, and exposes property owners to elevated risks of kidnapping, fraud, and other violent and financial crimes.
“Every single piece of legislation this government brings to Parliament is sub-standard and poorly drafted,” Imbert said. “We flag the problems, they spend months revising it, and then they come back to fix the mess they created in the first place.”