Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Small in­creas­es and sur­charges in cer­tain ar­eas in the 2026 Bud­get are geared to spread the op­por­tu­ni­ty for every­one to help take T&T for­ward, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo.

“Now is the time for all pa­tri­ot­ic cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es to step for­ward,” Tan­coo said yes­ter­day, as he re­spond­ed to con­cerns be­ing aired by cer­tain sec­tors about in­creas­es and tax­es in the 2026 Bud­get.

He was re­fer­ring to all in­creas­es in tax­es on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts, a 0.25 per cent levy on the as­sets of com­mer­cial banks and in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and a land­lord sur­charge.

Cus­toms du­ty hikes on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts be­came ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly on Mon­day, af­ter he pre­sent­ed the Bud­get. The As­set Levy and land­lord sur­charge be­gins on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

Bar­keep­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Satesh Moone­sar has sig­nalled costs will be passed on to cus­tomers. He said his as­so­ci­a­tion - or mem­bers - were not con­sult­ed on the rise in du­ties on al­co­hol.

In re­sponse, Tan­coo yes­ter­day said, “Now is al­so the time for cit­i­zens and con­sumers to pay close at­ten­tion to busi­ness­es as well, and what and who they are fo­cused on. No­body wants to pay in­creased tax­es, but I be­lieve that every busi­ness that seeks bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty, util­i­ties, in­fra­struc­ture, im­proved cus­toms and ex­cise per­for­mance etc, would ap­pre­ci­ate the in­ten­tion be­hind the changes and will re­alise that they will ben­e­fit and should there­fore be will­ing to ab­sorb the small changes.”

Land­lords sup­port sur­charge

The Land­lord Busi­ness sur­charge in­volves a reg­is­tra­tion fee of $2,500 and sur­charge of 2.5 per cent of the gross an­nu­al rental in­come of $20,000 or less; and 3.5 per cent of the gross an­nu­al rental in­come ex­ceed­ing $20,000.

Yes­ter­day, at least one apart­ment rental op­er­a­tor sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion for the land­lord sur­charge.

Kendall De­Four (chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer), of KG Apart­ment Rental and Ser­vices, in a let­ter, sup­port­ed “Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to for­malise and reg­u­late the rental mar­ket.”

He said, “We recog­nise that this mea­sure pro­motes trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and eq­ui­ty with­in the prop­er­ty sec­tor. As a re­spon­si­ble stake­hold­er, we ac­knowl­edge the im­por­tance of con­tribut­ing fair­ly to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and the strength­en­ing of fis­cal sys­tems.”

De Four added, “We view this ini­tia­tive not as a bur­den but as a step to­wards a more struc­tured, sus­tain­able and fair rental en­vi­ron­ment for all.

“K-G Apart­ment Rental and Ser­vices as­sures all our val­ued ten­ants and clients that no ad­di­tion­al costs aris­ing from this sur­charge will be passed to cus­tomers. Our com­mit­ment re­mains to pro­vide af­ford­able, high-qual­i­ty ac­com­mo­da­tion and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices while do­ing our part to sup­port the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic progress.”

An­oth­er rental group in San Fer­nan­do stat­ed, “Con­sid­er­ing the wide ex­panse of T&T’s rental prop­er­ty sec­tor in all var­i­ous forms, it was an area that need­ed a lot of at­ten­tion to deal with all kinds of is­sues - in­clud­ing very neg­a­tive one s- and it need­ed to be reg­u­larised a long time ago. That tells you how many is­sues plague this sec­tor.

“The for­mu­la isn’t un­du­ly oner­ous when you weigh this with the kind of earn­ings in T&T from rental prop­er­ties. We just need to hear more on how it will be im­ple­ment­ed and hope to hear that soon.”

Some Port-of-Spain agen­cies deal­ing with rentals said they are cur­rent­ly check­ing with own­ers of prop­er­ties they han­dle to as­cer­tain their views.

“The $2,500 reg­is­tra­tion fee may not af­fect some prop­er­ty own­ers be­cause this is a very wide sec­tor. The for­mu­la will af­fect land­lords ac­cord­ing to how high their rental rates are. If they pass the sur­charge on to their ten­ants, some could lose the ten­ant, iron­i­cal­ly, be­cause the mar­ket is so big ten­ants may find cheap­er rents else­where. So, they’ll have to make de­ci­sions.”

Sev­er­al prop­er­ty own­ers in Cou­va and Plai­sance Park, who ad­mit­ted rent­ing out a house or down­stairs apart­ment they owned, were re­signed to the sur­charge. One said, “Well, I paid my prop­er­ty tax when the last Gov­ern­ment had it and some of those cal­cu­la­tions were high. Now that gone. With this new land­lord charge, apart from the reg­is­tra­tion fee, with what I charg­ing my renter, the per­cent­age I’ll have to pay with this is less than my prop­er­ty tax, so I sup­pose I go­ing go ahead with it.”