Gail Alexan­der

There has been an in­crease in sub­mis­sions of prop­er­ty tax forms to the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion– but there is al­so some protest­ing at val­u­a­tion of­fices.

Sub­mis­sion of forms to the di­vi­sion now stands at 165,000.

How­ev­er, 200,000 forms are need­ed to trig­ger the tax.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning spoke about the form sub­mis­sion ex­er­cise in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

The de­bate was wrapped up last night by Im­bert, who de­scribed the Op­po­si­tion’s con­tri­bu­tion as “ram­bling in­co­her­ence and ir­rel­e­van­cy.”

Im­bert said while MP for Princes Town Bar­ry Par­darath at­tempt­ed to bring da­ta to the de­bate, he was still wrong.

Ear­li­er in the de­bate, Im­bert replied to Op­po­si­tion MP David Lee’s query on a pos­si­ble ex­ten­sion of the No­vem­ber 30 dead­line for sub­mis­sion of prop­er­ty tax forms to the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion.

An ex­er­cise was launched in Sep­tem­ber for the sub­mis­sion of forms to val­u­a­tion by per­sons in pos­ses­sion of land and prop­er­ty.

No­tice was is­sued in the news­pa­pers, on­line sub­mis­sion sys­tems arranged and 450,000 new re­turn forms were is­sued to house­hold­ers.

De­fault­ers risk a $5,000 fine and crim­i­nal of­fence. Some groups have sought an ex­ten­sion.

Im­bert said any ex­ten­sion would have to take place on or be­fore No­vem­ber 30 “if it takes place at all.”

He said his in­for­ma­tion is that on the pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion, 127,000 forms were sub­mit­ted for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties.

“So far on this oc­ca­sion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly fur­ther 55,000 forms have been sub­mit­ted. When dis­ag­gre­gat­ed, we have de­ter­mined that of the 55,000, about 7,000 are re­sub­mis­sions and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 37,500 are res­i­den­tial.

“So the to­tal num­ber of re­turns for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties at this time is 165,000. Ac­cord­ing to the law, we have to get to 200,000 be­fore the process of im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax can start.”

He added, “As a con­se­quence, the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion is care­ful­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and an ap­pro­pri­ate de­ci­sion will be tak­en at an ap­pro­pri­ate time.’’

In a sub­se­quent de­bate on the bill for the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty– via which the prop­er­ty tax will be col­lect­ed– Man­ning called on the Op­po­si­tion to try and not in­tim­i­date mem­bers of the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion by mak­ing their jobs more dif­fi­cult.

“There’s been some protest­ing and show­ing up at Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sions in an at­tempt to in­tim­i­date hard­work­ing em­ploy­ees,” Man­ning said.

Man­ning said ad­di­tion­al rev­enue, through the TTRA from the tax, is pro­ject­ed at $100 mil­lion in 2022, $500 mil­lion in 2023 and $750 mil­lion in 2024, which would sup­ply goods and ser­vices for the peo­ple.

He said Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­ject­ed the TTRA could bring in close to $1 bil­lion in tax­es from the gam­ing sec­tor be­tween 2022 to 2024.

To­tal pro­ject­ed tax­es from TTRA col­lec­tion over 2022 to 2024, he added, was $1.5 bil­lion to $3.2 bil­lion.

Man­ning not­ed that a World Bank re­port on the ease of do­ing busi­ness showed T&T’s cur­rent sys­tem ranked 160 out of 190 in pay­ing tax­es.

He said the tax gap an­nu­al­ly is $5 bil­lion, which “can­not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue.”

Man­ning said he re­ceived let­ters and com­plaints dai­ly from peo­ple about de­fi­cien­cies in BIR and Cus­toms and it was time to im­ple­ment the TTRA af­ter 11 years of at­tempt­ing.

Man­ning said cur­rent­ly, a “hand­ful of hard­work­ing peo­ple” are car­ry­ing T&T’s tax bur­den and the TTRA will en­sure every­one pays their fair share, which will re­duce the tax bur­den for all.