Malis­sa Lara

Busi­ness­men in bustling Port-of-Spain are un­sure if they will face a price hike or a de­crease with the new Prop­er­ty Tax leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, they said, if there is an in­crease in their prop­er­ty tax–which comes in­to ef­fect next March–it would be passed on to their ten­ants. The Sun­day Guardian spoke to var­i­ous mall own­ers, who said they were not con­sult­ed. In­stead, many of them re­ceived a fly­er with in­for­ma­tion about the tax. The busi­ness­men said it was too pre­ma­ture to pro­pose what they would say, but Ronald Hadeed, own­er of Brad­ford Mall, said: "We know the com­mer­cial rate is five per cent (next year)." He said he al­ready paid as­tro­nom­i­cal rates and tax­es.

Richard Sab­ga, own­er of Town Cen­tre Mall, said: "I haven't heard any­thing about it. No one has ap­proached us di­rect­ly as yet." Own­er of The Falls of West Mall, Richard Azar, said be­cause of the pro­posed in­crease, all land­lords, whether res­i­den­tial or com­mer­cial, would have to re­view their rental rates. "These in­creas­es, not on­ly prop­er­ty tax, but every oth­er com­mod­i­ty, which is wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, cost of main­te­nance, etcetera, will have to be passed on to our ten­ants." Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said the ma­jor stake­hold­ers were not con­sult­ed on the pro­posed new prop­er­ty tax regime. That was one of the most se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies.

"Cit­i­zens know that prop­er­ty tax­es are go­ing up, but no one knows the ex­tent of the reval­u­a­tion or of the stance that will be tak­en where dis­putes arise re­gard­ing the val­ues which are fixed by the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties." He said it had be­come more con­fus­ing for many cit­i­zens, be­cause "The of­fi­cial com­men­ta­tors have been promis­ing that the per­cent­age rate is be­ing re­duced, with­out re­mind­ing prop­er­ty own­ers that a low­er rate on a high­er val­ue is still go­ing to yield an in­creased tax." He main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment should pro­ceed slow­ly with this par­tic­u­lar ini­tia­tive, which he said con­tin­ued to cause wide­spread anx­i­ety among all sec­tions of the so­ci­ety and "In par­tic­u­lar be­cause it has added to the fur­ther de­cline in in­vestor con­fi­dence as we move in­to 2010."