Raphael John-Lall

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Pe­ter Tay­lor has crit­i­cised Dr Kei­th Row­ley, MP for Diego Mar­tin West, for what he de­scribed as hav­ing done a "very great dis­ser­vice" to the facts sur­round­ing the pro­posed prop­er­ty tax. "The Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West sought, to my mind, to do a very great dis­ser­vice to the facts and to what the prop­er­ty tax is re­al­ly meant to do," said Tay­lor. "I was un­hap­py with some of the con­tentions of the con­tri­bu­tions of Row­ley, MP for Diego Mar­tin West, who spoke of the fact that lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and lo­cal gov­ern­ment will not ben­e­fit from the tax." He crit­i­cised as ir­rel­e­vant Row­ley's ex­am­ple of some­one hav­ing a prop­er­ty of a $1 mil­lion with no in­ten­tion of rent­ing it out and, de­spite this, it will now be sub­ject to tax. "Prop­er­ty tax is­sue is not about rent­ing your prop­er­ty out or not. The crux of the tax is once you have a build­ing or land, it is li­able to be taxed," he said.

He said rais­ing tax­es are a nat­ur­al part of what any gov­ern­ment does and said the prop­er­ty tax would raise an es­ti­mat­ed $250 mil­lion in rev­enue. "The gov­ern­ment should have no ex­cuse to make in want­i­ng to in­crease tax­a­tion. That's how the na­tion's busi­ness is at­tend­ed to," he said. Tay­lor was com­ment­ing yes­ter­day on state­ments Row­ley made on Fri­day in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the de­bate on the amend­ments of the Prop­er­ty Tax Bill. Tay­lor said the new Prop­er­ty Tax Bill will not bring any new hard­ships to T&T. "At any point of time, in any na­tion, in any time of the world, there will be peo­ple who live on the edge of so­ci­ety. The prop­er­ty tax is not unique in that re­gard. The gov­ern­ment has al­ready tak­en ac­count of that with a blan­ket of so­cial sup­port that even pre-dat­ed the prop­er­ty tax," he said.

Tay­lor de­fend­ed the bill's amend­ments, say­ing there is noth­ing un­fair about it. "The new tax regime must re­flect the val­ue of peo­ple's prop­er­ty that has now been el­e­vat­ed to. There is noth­ing oner­ous or un­fair about that. Per­sons have been liv­ing off the fat of the land for too long and have be­come com­fort­able," he said. Tay­lor said the time had reached for the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion to be up­dat­ed. "With re­spect to the prop­er­ty tax, you can see a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween the Old Land and Build­ing Act of 1920, which has all the para­pher­na­lia of colo­nial­ism...but we have long passed that. We need to bring the leg­is­la­tion in tune with a mod­ern so­ci­ety and democ­ra­cy," Tay­lor said.