PAYE (Trinidad and Tobago), in plain English.

$84,000 TTD. That is how far a Trinidad and Tobago employee's annual income goes before the Board of Inland Revenue collects a dollar of income tax. Everything above it is Pay As You Earn, withheld by the employer on every pay run and remitted to the BIR every month.

What the BIR collects.

Pay As You Earn is Trinidad and Tobago's income tax mechanism for employed workers. The Board of Inland Revenue administers it. Employers are the collection point. Before net pay reaches any employee's account, the employer calculates the correct withholding, deducts it from gross wages, and holds it until the monthly BIR remittance.

Two rates apply. Chargeable income up to the higher band is taxed at 25 percent. Income above that band is taxed at 30 percent. The personal allowance, $84,000 TTD per year, reduces a worker's taxable exposure before either rate is applied. No tax is owed on the first $84,000 of annual income.

The Health Surcharge travels with it. Both are remitted to the BIR in the same monthly payment.

Running the numbers.

Take an employee earning $150,000 TTD per year.

Gross annual income: $150,000 TTD. Subtract the personal allowance of $84,000 TTD. Chargeable income: $66,000 TTD. That is the number the BIR's two-rate structure actually reaches. The 25 percent rate applies first, on chargeable income up to the higher band. The 30 percent rate applies to whatever sits above it. The BIR sets where the band falls.

Monthly withholding is the annual liability spread across pay runs, deducted from each cheque and remitted alongside the Health Surcharge on the monthly due date.

Filing it monthly.

PAYE is a monthly obligation. Employers calculate each employee's chargeable income for the pay period, apply the appropriate rate, deduct, and remit to the Board of Inland Revenue alongside the Health Surcharge. The personal allowance is an annual figure, which means the calculation must account for employees who join or leave part way through the tax year.

Mistakes that show up in audits.

• Applying rates to gross income before the personal allowance. An employee earning $120,000 TTD has $36,000 in chargeable income, not $120,000. Taxing the full gross overstates withholding and creates a reconciliation problem at year end.
• Sending the income tax payment without the Health Surcharge. Both go to the Board of Inland Revenue together. A remittance that includes one and not the other will trigger a discrepancy that takes time to clear.
• Applying a flat rate to all chargeable income. The 30 percent rate applies only to the portion of chargeable income above the higher band, not the full amount. Running it across the board overstates the liability.
• Not adjusting for employees who join or leave part way through the year. The $84,000 TTD personal allowance is annual. A hire in October and a hire in January are on the payroll for different numbers of months in that tax year. Payroll that does not account for partial-year status can withhold incorrectly from the first cheque.

How Workzoom handles it.

Workzoom Payroll for Trinidad and Tobago is built to handle PAYE in the correct deduction order: personal allowance first, 25 percent on chargeable income within the lower band, 30 percent on the portion above the threshold, Health Surcharge alongside. The sequence is not a spreadsheet the payroll team rebuilds each month.

That design reflects what Workzoom has been building toward: a Caribbean payroll engine that calculates the region's statutory obligations natively, not a US tool with a flag pasted on.

Workzoom generates the monthly PAYE summary; contact us about Trinidad and Tobago payroll and your timelines. The employer's team submits and remits directly to the Board of Inland Revenue.