Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is on track to com­mence prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion in 2023 and af­ter res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, as­sess­ment of com­mer­cial, in­dus­tri­al and agri­cul­tur­al prop­er­ties will fol­low.

Plus, the Gov­ern­ment's reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to work in con­cert with the new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and is in "broad agree­ment" with the THA's so­cio-eco­nom­ic agen­da.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­firmed this in his 2023 Bud­get yes­ter­day.

Im­bert said the le­gal struc­ture for the prop­er­ty tax is al­ready in place, "but we in­tend to make some sim­ple amend­ments be­fore the end of the year to the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act, to tight­en and clar­i­fy the pro­ce­dures for the gath­er­ing and pro­cess­ing of in­for­ma­tion and val­u­a­tion of prop­er­ties."

Up­on the pop­u­la­tion of the Val­u­a­tion Rolls, the Board of In­land Rev­enue will com­mence as­sess­ment and col­lec­tion of prop­er­ty tax, start­ing with res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, he added.

Res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax­es will be used by all Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions for de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance of their re­gions.

The first Val­u­a­tion Roll, when ful­ly com­plet­ed, should con­tain an es­ti­mat­ed 400,000 res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties.

"How­ev­er, col­lec­tion of tax­es will com­mence when the thresh­old of val­u­a­tion of 50 per cent of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties - 200,000 - is achieved," he said.

On the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion's 2021 ex­er­cise to pop­u­late the Val­u­a­tion Rolls, Im­bert said by Au­gust 2022, the di­vi­sion had re­ceived 325,296 re­turns of prop­er­ty da­ta.

"The An­nu­al Rental Val­ues (ARVs) of these prop­er­ties are cur­rent­ly be­ing as­sessed for in­ser­tion in the rolls. With­in these 325,296 re­turns, the di­vi­sion has in its pos­ses­sion in­for­ma­tion on over 200,000 res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, and is mov­ing to com­plete the val­u­a­tion of same."

The Val­u­a­tion Tri­bunal is be­ing fi­nalised to han­dle dis­putes over prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion and will be in place when the first Val­u­a­tion Roll is com­plet­ed. Tri­bunal mem­bers are ap­point­ed, with re­cruit­ment of the chair­man in progress.

Im­bert said the THA's poli­cies, pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties, which have been an­nounced, "if im­ple­ment­ed prop­er­ly, will im­prove the eco­nom­ic well­be­ing and qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple of To­ba­go."

Im­bert al­so said, "It was the in­ten­tion of this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to grant greater au­ton­o­my to the peo­ple of To­ba­go through the pas­sage of two pieces of leg­is­la­tion, which have been the sub­ject of ex­ten­sive and ex­tend­ed Par­lia­men­tary at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, this re­quired the bi­par­ti­san sup­port of mem­bers Op­po­site (UNC); which we didn't re­ceive. The Bills were al­so re­ject­ed in the PDP elec­tion cam­paign of 2022.

"These two Bills will pro­vide the peo­ple of To­ba­go with a greater say and de­ter­mi­na­tion in their af­fairs and I en­cour­age mem­bers op­po­site to fa­cil­i­tate the pas­sage of these Bills and place To­ba­go in a bet­ter po­si­tion to ad­vance its de­vel­op­ment man­date."

Im­bert added, "In the ab­sence of the pas­sage of the pro­posed To­ba­go In­ter­nal Self-Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion, which would have giv­en the THA sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in To­ba­go - in­clud­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the work now done and ser­vices pro­vid­ed by na­tion­al agen­cies and au­thor­i­ties, which con­tin­ue to be im­ple­ment­ed and fi­nanced by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment - and con­sis­tent with what we pro­vid­ed the PNM-led ad­min­is­tra­tion in the THA be­tween 2016 and 2021, we are al­lo­cat­ing the new PDP-led THA 4.3 per­cent of the to­tal na­tion­al bud­get in 2023.

"The al­lo­ca­tion to the THA for fis­cal year 2023 thus to­tals $2.521 bil­lion - $2.194 bil­lion for Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture, $300 mil­lion (THA's De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme) $18 mil­lion (URP), $9.2 mil­lion (CEPEP in To­ba­go)."

THA's 2023 al­lo­ca­tion rep­re­sents an in­crease of $185 mil­lion over last year's al­lo­ca­tion of $2.336 bil­lion. The THA al­so has ac­cess to an­oth­er $135 mil­lion in loan fi­nanc­ing for de­vel­op­ment projects and Gov­ern­ment's arranged a fur­ther US$15 mil­lion in loan fi­nanc­ing for coastal pro­tec­tion works.