Raphael John-Lall

The amend­ment of the Prop­er­ty Tax and Val­u­a­tion of Land Bills are meant to cor­rect the in­equities in the cur­rent sys­tem of land tax­a­tion, said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira. "The new prop­er­ty tax re­form ad­dress­es the in­equities that ex­ist in the cur­rent sys­tem. "Un­der the present sys­tem, there are a num­ber of in­equities that had arisen as a re­sult of the non-val­u­a­tion of prop­er­ties. "These in­equities have re­duced that vari­a­tion in tax li­a­bil­i­ties for more than 100 per cent for sim­i­lar res­i­den­tial build­ings.

"For ex­am­ple, a build­ing built in 1970 may at­tract a tax li­a­bil­i­ty of 96 cents un­der the Land and Build­ing Tax­es of 1920, where­as to­day, a sim­i­lar build­ing in the same lo­cal­i­ty, as a re­sult of de­val­u­a­tion over the years, may at­tract a tax li­a­bil­i­ty of $284 un­der the same Land and Build­ing Tax­es Act," she said. Tesheira said this yes­ter­day as she pi­lot­ed the Prop­er­ty Tax and Val­u­a­tion of Land Bills in Par­lia­ment. She said Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the State's busi­ness.

"This tax re­form is framed with­in this con­text so that our prop­er­ty tax regime will be an eq­ui­table, trans­par­ent sys­tem of prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion and tax as­sess­ment and col­lec­tion." Tesheira said the re­forms are meant to bring re­lief to those who need it. "This gov­ern­ment has in­tro­duced more le­nient pro­vi­sions re­gard­ing treat­ment of delin­quen­cy in prop­er­ty tax ad­min­is­tra­tion as part of the re­form of the prop­er­ty tax regime.

"Per­sons suf­fer­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ships, as de­fined un­der the Act, may now be al­lowed to en­joy the use of their prop­er­ty and have their tax de­ferred un­til such time they are able to pay their tax. "The time for which un­oc­cu­pied and used land may be for­feit­ed to the State has been ex­tend­ed from five to 16 years," she said. She this is part of an over­all plan for greater ef­fi­cien­cy in the tax­a­tion sys­tem. "This bill is one step fur­ther in re­al­is­ing our goal of a mod­ern ef­fi­cient tax ad­min­is­tra­tion sys­tem with the cre­at­ing of a more ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment," Tesheira said.