Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh, is en­cour­ag­ing land­lords across Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­plete the re­cent­ly rolled out on­line Land­lord Busi­ness Sur­charge reg­is­tra­tion with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time frame.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh said that while the ini­tia­tive is still in its ear­ly stages, there has been a grad­ual re­sponse from prop­er­ty own­ers since the process opened on Sun­day.

“I don’t have the ex­act num­bers as of now, but the on­ly in­for­ma­tion I got this morn­ing...we have had slow and steady per­sons ap­ply­ing, but per­sons have been avail­ing them­selves from 8 am this morn­ing...it’s just been slow and steady as the day pro­gressed,” Swarats­ingh said.

He not­ed that the com­pli­ance win­dow re­mains fixed and urged land­lords not to de­lay.

“As you would have known, this has not been ex­tend­ed...we are en­cour­ag­ing every­one to avail them­selves of the process and to be com­pli­ant with what is re­quired dur­ing this time frame as the reg­is­tra­tion process un­folds,” he added.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA), Sal­ly Singh, said ear­ly feed­back sug­gest­ed that many land­lords were still nav­i­gat­ing the new on­line sys­tem.

“Giv­en that the on­line reg­is­tra­tion forms were on­ly re­leased yes­ter­day (Sun­day), many land­lords have not yet com­plet­ed the process. It is still very ear­ly in the roll­out.”

Singh, how­ev­er, not­ed that some con­cerns were flagged by land­lords.

“We have al­so re­ceived a few queries from clients abroad seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure, which sug­gests there is still some need for fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion and guid­ance.”

Ac­cord­ing to her, over­all com­pli­ance ap­peared some­what in­con­sis­tent at this stage, but not­ed, “that is not un­ex­pect­ed giv­en how re­cent­ly the plat­form has gone live. We re­main sup­port­ive of the ini­tia­tive to mod­ernise the sec­tor, and as with any new sys­tem, there may be an ad­just­ment pe­ri­od while stake­hold­ers be­come fa­mil­iar with the re­quire­ments.”

Un­der the new re­quire­ments, all land­lords must reg­is­ter their rental prop­er­ties with the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR).

The reg­is­tra­tion dead­line has been ex­tend­ed to May 30, from an ear­li­er cut-off of March 31, to al­low land­lords ad­di­tion­al time to reg­u­larise their af­fairs.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plained that the ex­ten­sion was de­lib­er­ate.

“This en­sures land­lords have suf­fi­cient time to get their house in or­der and re­duces the po­ten­tial for rushed reg­is­tra­tion clos­er to the dead­line,” he said.

Fail­ure to reg­is­ter and file will at­tract penal­ties. In­di­vid­u­als face fines of $1,000 for every six months they are late, while cor­po­ra­tions or lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies will be fined $2,500 for every six-month pe­ri­od of non-com­pli­ance. More se­ri­ous sanc­tions al­so ap­ply, in­clud­ing fines of up to $250,000 and pos­si­ble im­pris­on­ment for up to three years.

The Land­lord Busi­ness Sur­charge ap­plies to gross rental in­come, with no de­duc­tions al­lowed. Rental in­come un­der $20,000 at­tracts a 2.5 per cent sur­charge, while in­come above $20,000 is charged at 3.5 per cent. In ad­di­tion, land­lords are re­quired to pay a one-time reg­is­tra­tion fee of $2,500.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance con­tin­ues to urge prop­er­ty own­ers to take ad­van­tage of the ex­tend­ed dead­line and en­sure full com­pli­ance as the reg­is­tra­tion process con­tin­ues.