For yet an­oth­er year, cit­i­zens of T&T will not have to pay any prop­er­ty tax­es as the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said it was un­like­ly the Gov­ern­ment would be able to col­lect in the 2012 fis­cal year. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's post-bud­get dis­cus­sion at its West­moor­ings of­fices, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an con­firmed no prop­er­ty tax­es would be paid this year. He said: "We do not an­tic­i­pate we will be able to col­lect any land and build­ing tax­es this year, and, as a re­sult, we have not bud­get­ed for it." The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had cam­paigned heav­i­ly against the for­mer gov­ern­ment's plan to im­pose new prop­er­ty tax­es, vow­ing to "axe the tax." Dook­er­an said there were some le­gal hur­dles that the Gov­ern­ment did not an­tic­i­pate. He said: "There are le­gal is­sues which have not yet been sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ad­dressed and we can­not re­turn to the land and build­ing tax­es un­less we are able to get over these hur­dles and, as a re­sult, we have not bud­get­ed for the col­lec­tion of any land and build­ing tax­es this year."

Asked whether this meant the Gov­ern­ment had not thought out its po­si­tion pri­or to its de­ci­sion not to im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said: "It was a pol­i­cy po­si­tion tak­en. You take a pol­i­cy po­si­tion and then you look at how you im­ple­ment that pol­i­cy. "When we went to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy, we re­alised that there were le­gal chal­lenges which we had to over­come. "Un­til we over­come those hur­dles, we will not be in a po­si­tion to col­lect the tax­es. But we have said that we are not go­ing back to the prop­er­ty tax and we will im­ple­ment the land and build­ing tax." Wade George, a part­ner at the ac­count­ing firm, Ernst and Young, raised the is­sue of the prop­er­ty tax, say­ing T&T was los­ing rev­enue at a time when it was in need of mon­ey. He said: "By some es­ti­mates, the coun­try has for­gone some­where be­tween $300 and $400 mil­lion by it not be­ing in a po­si­tion to col­lect land and build­ing or prop­er­ty tax­es and that is mon­ey that the Gov­ern­ment can use."

George added that the Gov­ern­ment faced the chal­lenge of deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion where the val­ue of prop­er­ties around the coun­try had now been up­grad­ed and un­der the old land and build­ing tax­es, the rates were high­er than those pro­posed in the prop­er­ty tax. Dook­er­an con­ced­ed that the prop­er­ty tax con­tin­ued to be a chal­lenge for the Gov­ern­ment. Luck­i­ly, that lack of col­lec­tion was not hurt­ing the Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue over­all, Dook­er­an said. He said his mantra was not to place ad­di­tion­al bur­den on the pop­u­la­tion but rather to es­tab­lish the frame­work to al­low the econ­o­my to grow. Dook­er­an said there was sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort to en­sure all the tax­es owed to the Gov­ern­ment were col­lect­ed and that when­ev­er the Gov­ern­ment owed peo­ple mon­ey, in­clud­ing VAT re­funds, that it was done in a time­ly fash­ion. He said: "I am from the old school. My moth­er taught me if I owe you, I should pay you and if you owe me, you should pay me."