Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist and Mus­lim cler­ic Iman Rasheed Karim has ig­nit­ed a fresh row over the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed land­lord tax, ac­cus­ing of­fi­cials of ram­ming through dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion with­out even the cour­tesy of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Fe­lic­i­ty Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Ch­agua­nas, Karim said he had been ap­proached by scores of frus­trat­ed land­lords seek­ing to form a na­tion­al land­lords’ as­so­ci­a­tion af­ter the new mea­sures were re­vealed.

Karim, who was out­spo­ken when the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion at­tempt­ed to re­vive prop­er­ty tax, said the lat­est leg­is­la­tion is puni­tive, ill-con­ceived and ut­ter­ly de­tached from re­al­i­ty.

He said the law fails to con­sid­er the long list of bur­dens land­lords al­ready shoul­der – months of un­paid rent, ru­inous re­pair bills and the cost of hir­ing a bailiff just to re­cov­er in­come that should have been theirs in the first place.

And yet, Karim said, the Gov­ern­ment wants to tax land­lords on “gross” fig­ures with­out defin­ing what that even means.

“Do we now have to pay tax on emp­ty apart­ments? Tax when ten­ants de­fault? Are land­lords ex­pect­ed to ab­sorb every loss while the Gov­ern­ment pock­ets the rest? We are de­mand­ing con­sul­ta­tion,” he said.

Karim said un­less the leg­is­la­tion is re­vis­it­ed and amend­ed, land­lords will be left with no pro­tec­tion, no re­course and no con­fi­dence in a sys­tem stacked against them.

He said he fore­sees many small land­lords go­ing out of busi­ness and the bur­den of hous­ing grow­ing more on the State.