Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay­marie.fletch­er@guar­cian.co.tt

As the count­down con­tin­ues to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion (LGE), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is promis­ing that prop­er­ty tax will be an as­set to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and, by ex­ten­sion, will ben­e­fit those who pay these tax­es.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter se­ries at the Diego Mar­tin South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Four Roads, Diego Mar­tin, last night, Row­ley said while he ac­knowl­edges no one likes to pay tax­es, it will be a rev­enue stream for cor­po­ra­tions to im­prove and treat with the needs of every com­mu­ni­ty.

“A lot of peo­ple pay­ing a small amount will cre­ate a de­cent size pool of funds for your bor­ough to now con­tin­u­ous­ly treat with your neigh­bour­hood’s needs and that is an im­prove­ment in your qual­i­ty of life,” Row­ley said.

He said he was not afraid to talk about tax­es, nor does he be­lieve it will cause the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to lose the LGE.

He added that the PNM was not try­ing to make cit­i­zens pay any in­her­i­tance tax­es ei­ther, de­spite what the Op­po­si­tion has pur­port­ed.

On the flip side, he en­cour­aged his con­stituents of Diego Mar­tin and the coun­try to vote for what he de­scribed as a mod­ern lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem with mod­ern man­age­ment, in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and in­creased re­sources to build up neigh­bour­hoods.

Ad­dress­ing how prop­er­ty tax will be col­lect­ed and paid, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the law now states that all 14 cor­po­ra­tions will col­lect and re­tain the prop­er­ty tax for the res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties with­in the bound­aries of each of their cor­po­ra­tions.

He ex­plained that the min­istry’s Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion has al­ready reached the thresh­old of over 50 per cent of all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in the coun­try.

Hav­ing val­ued more than 50 per cent of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, the di­vi­sion then sends a Val­u­a­tion Roll to his of­fice as Fi­nance Min­is­ter, he said. This roll in­cludes all the ad­dress­es and val­ues of all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties across all 14 lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions.

Now that he has re­ceived this roll, Im­bert said he will pub­lish a no­tice very soon to the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR). BIR will then use the val­u­a­tions done by the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion and mul­ti­ply it by three per cent.

Break­ing down the fig­ures, Im­bert said for al­most 60 per cent of all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the prop­er­ty tax will not ex­ceed $1,050 an­nu­al­ly or ap­prox­i­mate­ly $90 to $95 month­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, their tax will be $40 month­ly or $480 an­nu­al­ly.

De­bunk­ing ru­mours that tax­es would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater, he added, “The Op­po­si­tion is say­ing it is three per cent of the same price. So, let’s say you have a typ­i­cal apart­ment worth $1 mil­lion, which is not too dif­fi­cult these days. They’re say­ing three per cent of that, you’re go­ing to have to pay $30,000. That’s the kind of lie out­side there. It is not true. It is three per cent of rental…For two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tion, the rental is some­where be­tween $1,500 and $3,000 a month.”

Im­bert said while the oth­er types of prop­er­ty tax are a bit more com­pli­cat­ed, val­u­a­tion of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax is sim­ple.

Row­ley al­so told sup­port­ers cen­tral gov­ern­ment wants to give the cor­po­ra­tions more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty so that the needs of the peo­ple at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el could be ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dressed. He said this is called de­vo­lu­tion of gov­ern­ment.

He said a well-round­ed cor­po­ra­tion could take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of main­te­nance of schools, re­pair­ing sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, main­te­nance of health cen­tres and even the man­age­ment of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres once they have the re­sources, which land and build­ing tax would pro­vide.

At present, these con­cerns fall un­der the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

He fur­ther pro­posed that as the new sys­tem im­proves, oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties such as Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment con­cerns can al­so fall un­der cor­po­ra­tions.

He stressed that lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form was about de­vel­op­ment and en­cour­aged those who have nev­er vot­ed for the PNM or vot­ed at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el to vote on Au­gust 14, as lo­cal gov­ern­ment is vi­tal for the needs of the peo­ple and is about bet­ter, strong, man­age­ment.

In re­sponse, many peo­ple present last night ex­pressed con­cerns, in­clud­ing ques­tion­ing how lo­cal gov­ern­ment can help re­duce crime, im­prove agro-en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and road im­prove­ment in their ar­eas.

Row­ley said the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form will bring more re­sources to the cor­po­ra­tion to ad­dress all of these con­cerns.