DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The long lines out­side the Board of In­land Rev­enue’s Cam­pus Plaza yes­ter­day morn­ing were not sole­ly due to prop­er­ty tax.

The BIR’s col­lec­tion cov­ers a wide range of tax­es, in­clud­ing VAT, health sur­charge, and PAYE paid by busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to a source at the BIR of­fice, the longer lines were caused by in­di­vid­u­als pay­ing for Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil ex­ams which will be writ­ten in Jan­u­ary.

The source sug­gest­ed re­lo­cat­ing the cashier’s of­fices from up­stairs to the low­er floor to speed up the process.

BIR cashiers of­ten close be­fore 4 pm, which adds to the morn­ing rush. Around 2.30 pm, a woman mak­ing her way to se­cu­ri­ty to pay for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was told the cashier was closed. Luck­i­ly, an­oth­er se­cu­ri­ty guard al­lowed her in­side, en­sur­ing she would not be forced to re­turn an­oth­er day.

A home­own­er who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Mr Browne said he found a way to beat the sys­tem. He said yes­ter­day’s process was seam­less.

“It was good, once you come in the af­ter­noon be­fore 3 o’clock. I usu­al­ly come be­tween 1 pm and 3 pm so it kind of ease down. I don’t know why peo­ple does rush in the morn­ing,” he said. 

Ke­ston Lei­th said he spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 min­utes at the BIR to pay his prop­er­ty tax. He ar­rived around 2 pm and left be­fore 2.30 pm. He sug­gest­ed that the Min­istry of Fi­nance make pro­vi­sions for prop­er­ty tax to be paid on­line.

“It will ease up the amount of peo­ple com­ing in­to the build­ing be­cause it have more than one pay­ment to go to that cashier,” he said ref­er­enc­ing PAYE and oth­er tax­es that are paid to the same cashier.  

Ef­forts to reach of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of Fi­nance for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful, while Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.