Sto­ries by DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

There will be ab­solute­ly no sup­port for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, nor will it agree to prop­er­ty tax.

That’s be­cause Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has too many con­cerns and wants to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ur­gent­ly to dis­cuss them, as he ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of be­ing against To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.

“We are proud of what we were able to achieve de­spite ob­sta­cles and what I would call pure unadul­ter­at­ed fight down, bad mind, and pure wicked­ness and spite!” Au­gus­tine said dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion

Against this back­drop, Au­gus­tine said the THA can­not sup­port the TTRA be­cause it is not in the is­land’s best in­ter­est.

“The leg­is­la­tion re­veals a cu­ri­ous but not sur­pris­ing in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the ex­pressed as­pi­ra­tion of To­bag­o­ni­ans for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. And it can be jus­ti­fi­ably clas­si­fied as a piece of colo­nial leg­is­la­tion. In this re­gard, I have for­mal­ly writ­ten to the prime min­is­ter re­quest­ing an ur­gent meet­ing to dis­cuss this very im­por­tant is­sue,” he said.

De­tail­ing his con­cerns about tax col­lec­tion in To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine ex­plained that for fis­cal 2025, tax rev­enue is es­ti­mat­ed as fol­lows:

In­come and prof­its $133.9M

Prop­er­ty $3.9M

Goods and ser­vices $70M

In­ter­na­tion­al trade $2.6M

To­tal tax rev­enue es­ti­mat­ed: $214.5M

Prop­er­ty in­come tax is be­lieved to be $.03 mil­lion, while oth­er non-tax rev­enue is es­ti­mat­ed at $1.31 mil­lion for a to­tal of $1.43 mil­lion. To­tal rev­enue is pro­ject­ed to be $215.9 mil­lion but Au­gus­tine said this is not an ac­cu­rate pic­ture of rev­enues gen­er­at­ed in To­ba­go.

“As it is well known, there are sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue streams gen­er­at­ed in To­ba­go that are col­lect­ed in Trinidad and not re­mit­ted to To­ba­go,” he said.

Au­gus­tine found it pass­ing strange that Act No. 17 of 2021, which pro­vides for the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTRA, was passed and as­sent­ed to on De­cem­ber 23, 2021, days af­ter the new as­sem­bly ex­ec­u­tive as­sumed of­fice and 48 hours be­fore Christ­mas.

“I am not sure as to whether this de­vel­op­ment was co­in­ci­den­tal or cal­cu­lat­ed, but giv­en their na­ture, I feel it’s more cal­cu­lat­ed,” he said.

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said there are sev­er­al de­fects in the act which he be­lieves place the THA at a dis­ad­van­tage, re­veal­ing a “cu­ri­ous but not sur­pris­ing” in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty to To­ba­go’s de­sire for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion which he jus­ti­fied as “colo­nial leg­is­la­tion”.

Among his con­cerns, Au­gus­tine said the act does not al­low the THA to have any le­gal or for­mal re­mit over the es­tab­lish­ment of the TTRA, or how it will be es­tab­lished. He said this has cre­at­ed con­fu­sion and anx­i­ety among staff. The func­tion­al and re­port­ed re­la­tion­ship be­tween the THA and the TTRA, as well as the as­sem­bly’s le­gal au­thor­i­ty over the rev­enue col­lect­ed in To­ba­go, is al­so brought in­to ques­tion.

“The au­thor­i­ty is, by na­ture, a leg­isla­tive crea­ture and as such the de­fects iden­ti­fied must be com­pre­hen­sive­ly re­ceived be­fore the THA can sup­port the op­er­a­tional­is­ing of the au­thor­i­ty in To­ba­go,” he said.

As for prop­er­ty tax, he said they can­not sup­port it un­til all To­bag­o­ni­ans can get their lands on their names, as some prop­er­ties are still in the name of their “colo­nial mas­ters”. The THA, he said, will es­tab­lish a Le­gal Prop­er­ty Desk to as­sist peo­ple with the bur­den of ad­min­is­trat­ing their prop­er­ty as a re­sult.

He added that he re­ceived “po­lit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence” that prop­er­ty tax will be im­ple­ment­ed af­ter gen­er­al elec­tions. How­ev­er, he said that too will be re­ject­ed.

“Imag­ine hav­ing to pay prop­er­ty tax on lands that your fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions can­not re­move the colo­nial mas­ters’ names from the deeds. Imag­ine hav­ing to pay prop­er­ty tax on lands you can­not col­la­terise or can­not mort­gage against,” he said.

He said for this rea­son, in fis­cal 2025 the THA will open a le­gal prop­er­ty desk staffed with lawyers to as­sist To­bag­o­ni­ans with the bur­den of ad­min­is­trat­ing for their prop­er­ties.

“This is on­ly a stop-gap mea­sure un­til such time as laws are passed to rec­ti­fy this his­tor­i­cal in­jus­tice,” he said.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine said the his­tor­i­cal fail­ure of To­ba­go’s re­al es­tate mar­ket will be ad­dressed with the con­struc­tion of 54 hous­es in the Rise­land Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

“Our in­for­ma­tion is stuck at the Min­istry of Hous­ing and has not been sent to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, stalling this project. But with or with­out the col­lab­o­ra­tion, we shall build these hous­ing units in Rise­land,” he said.

More than 480 homes are ear­marked to be con­struct­ed over the course of 36 months.

Fur­ther­more, Au­gus­tine ex­plained that the THA will be de­vel­op­ing new so­cial as­sis­tance grants for dif­fer­ent­ly abled peo­ple to im­prove mo­bil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to and with­in their homes, as well as for their kin to take care of them when their par­ents can­not.

He said work to digi­tise the case man­age­ment as­pect of the so­cial grants pro­gramme is on­go­ing and by the end of the first quar­ter of 2025, clients will be able to ap­ply and re­ceive grants dig­i­tal­ly.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley did not re­spond to What­sApp ques­tions sent on the mat­ters raised by the Chief Sec­re­tary.