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RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the Prop­er­ty Tax is not be­ing sus­pend­ed but is be­ing re­duced for do­mes­tic home­own­ers from three per cent to two per cent.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Im­bert re­vealed that the Prop­er­ty Tax is pro­ceed­ing as planned de­spite the post­ing of sus­pen­sion no­tices at the Board of In­land Rev­enue of­fices.  

With mem­bers of the pub­lic com­plain­ing about hefty tax no­tices, Im­bert pro­posed to ex­tend dead­lines for the is­suance of No­tices of As­sess­ment and al­low for ad­di­tion­al time for prop­er­ty own­ers to lodge ob­jec­tions. 

He re­vealed that the Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill 2024 will en­sure the tax­es are rolled out fair­ly and eq­ui­tably.

Clar­i­fy­ing the cur­rent sta­tus of the Prop­er­ty Tax Act’s en­force­ment, Im­bert re­vealed there were on­go­ing ad­just­ments in re­sponse to pub­lic feed­back. The new leg­isla­tive amend­ments, he said, were aimed at eas­ing the tran­si­tion for prop­er­ty own­ers.

“Con­trary to what has been sug­gest­ed in me­dia re­ports and on so­cial me­dia, there has been no ‘sus­pen­sion’ of Prop­er­ty Tax,” Im­bert ex­plained.

He said the Prop­er­ty Tax Act was in the process of op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion, with No­tices of Tax As­sess­ments al­ready is­sued to nu­mer­ous res­i­den­tial landown­ers and oc­cu­piers since Feb­ru­ary 2024.

Say­ing the roll­out of Prop­er­ty Tax has not been with­out its chal­lenges, Im­bert ac­knowl­edged the “teething is­sues” aris­ing from the tran­si­tion away from the out­dat­ed Land and Build­ing Tax­es Act of 1920 and the Tax­es Ex­emp­tion Act of 1902.

“This has not been a sim­ple ex­er­cise,” Im­bert ad­mit­ted, point­ing out the in­ef­fi­cien­cies and dis­par­i­ties of the pre­vi­ous tax­a­tion sys­tem, which re­sult­ed in un­equal tax bur­dens across dif­fer­ent re­gions and types of prop­er­ty.

High­light­ing the dis­crep­an­cies un­der the old sys­tem, Im­bert not­ed, “About the sev­er­al Coun­ties and To­ba­go, some of the last val­u­a­tions were con­duct­ed in 1948, over 75 years ago.”

This con­trast­ed sharply with more re­cent val­u­a­tions in ur­ban cen­tres, lead­ing to a high­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate tax struc­ture, he said.

To ad­dress pub­lic con­cerns over the val­u­a­tion process, Im­bert said the new Prop­er­ty Tax Bill is in­tend­ed to re­duce the im­pact of the new val­u­a­tions and cor­rect er­ro­neous be­liefs re­gard­ing prop­er­ty tax­a­tion.

Im­bert high­light­ed that 801 pay­ments of prop­er­ty tax had been made up un­til March 13, 2024, to­talling $1,030,864.55. 

In light of the pro­posed amend­ments, Im­bert said all tax­pay­ers who have al­ready paid will be re­fund­ed and is­sued new tax no­tices at the ad­just­ed rate.

Im­bert al­so said that unau­tho­rised no­tices about the sus­pen­sion of prop­er­ty tax pay­ments post­ed on the doors of Re­gion­al Rev­enue Col­lec­tion Of­fices were not sanc­tioned by him. 

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment over this pro­ce­dur­al lapse, Im­bert em­pha­sised that such de­ci­sions should not be com­mu­ni­cat­ed in this man­ner. 

“This is not the way that a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion should be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic,” he re­marked, as­sur­ing that steps are be­ing tak­en to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents in the fu­ture.

Im­bert said it was the Gov­ern­ment’s re­solve to im­ple­ment the Prop­er­ty Tax Act fair­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, whilst ad­dress­ing valid con­cerns about the tax’s im­pact.