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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Valuation surveyor: Property seizure a last resort

by

20090913

The col­lec­tion of new prop­er­ty tax­es will be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2010 and if you can­not pay them, your prop­er­ty will be seized by the State and auc­tioned, Mervyn Thomp­son, val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or of the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion at the Fi­nance Min­istry says."That is the very last re­sort," Thomp­son told the Sun­day Guardian last Fri­day, tak­ing a break from his hec­tic sched­ule at the di­vi­sion, which is busy prepar­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new prop­er­ty tax regime.

Asked about penal­ties for the non-pay­ment of the in­creased tax­es on prop­er­ty, Thomp­son said, "You have un­til the end of Sep­tem­ber, which is the end of the fis­cal year, to pay your tax. "If you don't pay by that date, there will be a ten per cent sur­charge on your tax and, for every day af­ter that you don't pay, 15 per cent per an­num. "If you don't pay for long enough, the bailiff will come in and take from you the val­ue of the tax­es you owe. "Fi­nal­ly, and hope­ful­ly it will nev­er get there, the last re­sort is the for­fei­ture of your prop­er­ty by the State."

Unit rate

Work on the val­u­a­tion of prop­er­ties in T&T has been go­ing on in the di­vi­sion for the last 18 months, Thomp­son said. "Work­ers have been go­ing out and col­lect­ing ev­i­dence of rents col­lect­ed." Da­ta col­lec­tion has al­so been go­ing on since 2003 in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions (which col­lect land and build­ing tax­es), ac­cord­ing to Thomp­son. When will the val­u­a­tion ex­er­cise be com­plet­ed?

"It's one of those jobs that will nev­er be com­plet­ed," the val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or said. "We will con­tin­ue to col­lect da­ta as we go along."

Asked how dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties will be taxed, he said the di­vi­sion was us­ing a sys­tem where a unit rate will be put on com­mu­ni­ties which have hous­es of the same or sim­i­lar val­ue. He said any house in that com­mu­ni­ty will start out with the unit rate but each house will be in­spect­ed to see if there are any plus­es or mi­nus­es which may af­fect the val­ue. De­scrib­ing the in­creased tax­es as "very eq­ui­table," Thomp­son said prop­er­ty own­ers can pay them like reg­u­lar bills, at the banks or even on­line.

The bud­get says

? Gov­ern­ment us­ing a sin­gle plat­form to as­sess all prop­er­ties.

? The sin­gle val­u­a­tion agency-Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion.

? The sin­gle col­lec­tion agency-Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR).

? Tax­es can be paid at Dis­trict Rev­enue of­fices, banks, TTPost cen­tres, T&TEC and WASA of­fices.

? Bills will be mailed to prop­er­ty own­ers.

? Tax on res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties- three per cent.

? Com­mer­cial prop­er­ties- five per cent.

? Agri­cul­tur­al prop­er­ties-one per cent.


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