Raphael John-Lall

If the prop­er­ty tax is rein­tro­duced, it must be clear­ly struc­tured to ben­e­fit all mem­bers of so­ci­ety, says Allyson West, tax part­ner at the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC). "Prop­er­ty tax is some­thing we will be hear­ing about for a while. If a tax should be rein­tro­duced, if we have prop­er­ty, I see no rea­son why we should not be pay­ing for ser­vices that we get. "It should be struc­tured so that it could be fair, like dis­tin­guish­ing whether it could be res­i­den­tial or com­mer­cial," West said. "It must al­so be dis­tin­guish­ing in ar­eas that we want to en­cour­age, like agri­cul­ture. It needs to be clear on how the tax­es will be com­put­ed." West was speak­ing at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's sec­ond pre-bud­get pan­el dis­cus­sion at its of­fices in West­moor­ings on Tues­day. This state­ment comes af­ter new­ly-ap­point­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said last week that he has no ide­o­log­i­cal or philo­soph­i­cal pre­dis­po­si­tion against prop­er­ty tax­es. In last week's Busi­ness Guardian, Howai said prop­er­ty tax­es should be con­sid­ered.

"How we ac­tu­al­ly go about do­ing it, how the bur­den is spread, is im­por­tant and what the costs are, are things we need to look at prop­er­ly. "Fis­cal pol­i­cy is a big part of what the Min­istry of Fi­nance does and, there­fore, I have to look at in­no­v­a­tive ways in which we can look at the tax struc­ture with a view to en­hanc­ing rev­enue. Now, that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean in­creas­ing tax­es. "One of the prob­lems of the old tax regime was that it was not clear if a man­u­fac­tur­er had to pay prop­er­ty tax with re­gard to de­pre­ci­at­ing ma­chin­ery: should the cost be tak­en in­to ac­count, the writ­ten-up val­ue, the cost of equip­ment. "Those kinds of things need to be per­fect. An­oth­er prob­lem with the old sys­tem that we need to avoid was that it was a keep back, de­pend­ing on what re­gion you had your prop­er­ty in." West's re­sponse to the gas sub­sidy is­sue: West said the gas sub­sidy should be used to en­cour­age in­vest­ment. "In my view, what we need to be care­ful of is us­ing it prop­er­ly so that we get good val­ue. We do need to en­cour­age in­vest­ment in var­i­ous ar­eas, like man­u­fac­tur­ing and so on, and the gas sub­sidy is ef­fec­tive if we use it prop­er­ly."

Ear­li­er prop­er­ty tax mea­sures

The pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to im­ple­ment a new prop­er­ty tax regime in 2009. That move was met with mas­sive protests. The Con­gress of the Peo­ple, now led by Prakash Ra­mad­har, ral­lied against the prop­er­ty tax un­der the slo­gan: Axe the Tax. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar cam­paigned in May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion on the ba­sis that, if elect­ed, a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion would not im­ple­ment the prop­er­ty tax. In March, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment would be look­ing at rein­tro­duc­ing the land build­ing tax. Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at the me­chan­ics of deal­ing with the land and build­ing tax­es in the con­text of the wider tax-re­form ex­er­cise. He said the rates paid by own­ers would be part of the re­view. In Jan­u­ary, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said if the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed the con­tro­ver­sial prop­er­ty tax, there would have been no need for Dook­er­an to re­turn to the Par­lia­ment to seek par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for more than $2.7 bil­lion in in­creas­es in ex­pen­di­tures from the last fis­cal year. Deyals­ingh's state­ment was made dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­ta­tion and Vari­a­tion) Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill 2012 in the Up­per House.