Fair treat­ment of cit­i­zens by pub­lic bod­ies is the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of good gov­er­nance. Some­times, it is not a mat­ter of equal­i­ty but eq­ui­ty be­cause a gov­ern­ment should spend more of its so­cial de­vel­op­ment dol­lars to sup­port low­er-in­come and vul­ner­a­ble groups.

How­ev­er, in the ex­er­cise of pub­lic func­tions, all cit­i­zens have the right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment.

If that right had been ob­served in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax, there wouldn’t have been any dis­par­i­ties. The de­ci­sion-mak­ing process and plan­ning were not based on a gov­er­nance mod­el for cit­i­zen-cen­tred­ness; that would have re­sult­ed in a sys­tem­at­ic and com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to the roll­out.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance made a state­ment that re­ferred to prop­er­ties at the low­er lev­el that have “not yet been val­ued, and these pro­por­tions may change.”

Is it right to send as­sess­ments of the ac­tu­al tax payable to prop­er­ty own­ers with­in 30 days when the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion has yet to as­sess many prop­er­ties or send no­tices of the an­nu­al rental val­ues of the prop­er­ties to all own­ers?

That hap­pened be­fore the de­crease of the tax from three to two per cent, as some peo­ple have al­ready paid.

If the In­land Rev­enue can­not send as­sess­ments of tax payable by all cit­i­zens by March 31 (amend­ed to June 30 for this year), that will be a de­nial of some cit­i­zens’ right to the pro­duc­tive use of their mon­ey, while oth­ers have use of theirs un­til when­ev­er they are as­sessed and no­ti­fied of the tax payable.

Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, there is a right of the in­di­vid­ual to equal­i­ty of treat­ment by pub­lic au­thor­i­ties in the ex­er­cise of their func­tions.

Are all cit­i­zens be­ing treat­ed just­ly?

The au­thor­i­ties have a mam­moth task, but they had about ten years to per­fect the sys­tem. Notwith­stand­ing sec­tion 18 (2) of the Prop­er­ty Tax Act, In­land Rev­enue should take care not to breach Sec­tion 4 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The process of ob­jec­tions re­mains cum­ber­some and chal­leng­ing for prop­er­ty own­ers, as they still don’t know, or some don’t un­der­stand, the method used to as­sess the an­nu­al rental val­ues.

On what ob­jec­tive ba­sis could they ob­ject oth­er than pay for a val­u­a­tion, which is like­ly to cost more than $3,000, de­pend­ing on the val­ue of the prop­er­ty?

Don’t ex­pect a prompt so­lu­tion, as the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions doesn’t have to re­spond to an ob­jec­tion in un­der a year.

If the Gov­ern­ment were as pas­sion­ate about ad­dress­ing the ac­tu­al is­sues as they are de­fend­ing crit­i­cisms, in­clud­ing the dere­lic­tion of du­ty of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions who flout the Ex­che­quer Act with im­puni­ty, it would show its cit­i­zen-cen­tred­ness and that it cares about mis­man­age­ment of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

All we hear is that cit­i­zens are ob­ject­ing to the prop­er­ty tax, but they are not. The Op­po­si­tion is, al­though it was the UNC gov­ern­ment that an­nounced the in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax in 2014.

Show­ing ar­ro­gance and the im­pres­sion that cit­i­zens’ crit­i­cism is an­ti-gov­ern­ment and above re­proach sends a mes­sage that cit­i­zens are both­er­some pests be­cause they com­plain about a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

Such pos­tures have done noth­ing to con­vey Gov­ern­ment’s good in­ten­tions or what­ev­er good they have done.

Cit­i­zens aren’t con­vinced that more mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions will make a dif­fer­ence be­cause of cor­rup­tion.

Not my words—read Hansard’s re­ports on Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment ar­gues that cit­i­zens own­ing prop­er­ty abroad pay prop­er­ty tax.

But the schools there are fit for chil­dren. Cit­i­zens don’t wake up to find that a neigh­bour’s garage be­came a re­pair shop, or that the bar around the cor­ner and near a school be­came a mi­ni one-arm ban­dit casi­no.

They will not find ug­ly bill­boards block­ing their views of moun­tains and seas. They will not have to clean pub­lic drains them­selves for their well-be­ing.

All these things hap­pen here dai­ly and are pre­ventable if Gov­ern­ment holds ac­count­able the agen­cies over which they have law­ful ad­min­is­tra­tive di­rec­tion and con­trol.

Re­duc­ing the tax by one per cent and ex­tend­ing the pe­ri­od for ob­ject­ing to a val­u­a­tion are wel­come.

This col­umn has cit­ed the waste of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars giv­en to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

Ei­ther they failed to ac­count for these monies, sub­mit­ting no an­nu­al fi­nan­cial re­ports for years, or the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al had to qual­i­fy many re­ports be­cause proof of pay­ment and re­ceipts were un­avail­able.

But they are not the on­ly ones cul­pa­ble. So, too, is the min­istry re­spon­si­ble for lo­cal gov­ern­ment and Cab­i­net, each mem­ber be­ing ac­count­able un­der the doc­trine of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

If a cor­po­ra­tion or a state en­ter­prise fails to sub­mit ac­counts by the statu­to­ry date, the re­spon­si­ble min­istry should act against the CEO and oth­er mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion.

The min­istry can send warn­ing let­ters and give pub­lic up­dates in Par­lia­ment or rec­om­mend they be fired for break­ing the law.

That won’t hap­pen be­cause Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion will not act against their er­rant cor­po­ra­tions’ lead­ers.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, the chair­man of Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion, Ryan Ram­per­sad, lament­ed the loss of in­come due to the de­crease of the prop­er­ty tax rate from three to two per cent.

How­ev­er, his par­ty wants the tax axed. The last fi­nan­cial re­port for that cor­po­ra­tion was for the fis­cal year 2008 and was laid in Par­lia­ment in 2022.

As ex­pect­ed, the au­di­tor couldn’t rec­on­cile the ac­counts. We don’t know how that cor­po­ra­tion spent our mon­ey for the past 15 years.

That is not a triv­ial mat­ter.

It is pro­fes­sion­al­ly un­eth­i­cal, mean­ing abuse of stan­dards and the Ex­che­quer law that gov­erns ac­count­abil­i­ty for the pub­lic purse.

Many peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for such neg­li­gence are the same ones ex­pect­ed to re­form lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

What ex­as­per­ates cit­i­zens is how politi­cians try to ma­nip­u­late fail­ure.

MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, in his pre­sen­ta­tion last week on prop­er­ty tax, ad­mit­ted that Gov­ern­ment did noth­ing to col­lect an es­ti­mat­ed $14 bil­lion in tax­es since 2010.

As cum­ber­some and ar­cha­ic as the old regime was, it was fool­ish to for­go that amount of in­come rather than wait un­til com­plete readi­ness to im­ple­ment the new sys­tem.

You don’t break down your house un­less you have an­oth­er shel­ter.

Then MP Faris Al-Rawi used the mur­der of peo­ple at Harpe Place to jus­ti­fy fic­tion when he ar­gued that the rev­enue earned from the prop­er­ty tax could pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for hous­ing de­vel­op­ment projects in com­mu­ni­ties like Harpe Place.

If Gov­ern­ment hadn’t stopped the old prop­er­ty tax, re­sult­ing in the loss of bil­lions in in­come, and if the In­land Rev­enue had col­lect­ed the bil­lions in ar­rears, there is no guar­an­tee that Harpe place would have had se­cu­ri­ty and the mur­ders would not have hap­pened—mur­ders re­sult­ing from gang war­fare, by gangs that may have ben­e­fit­ed from tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars.

Just two years ago, in 2021, speak­ing on the PT Bill, Sen­a­tor Allyson West said that the coun­try was “at the bot­tom” of the list in ef­fec­tive tax col­lec­tion among sev­er­al Cari­com coun­tries, in­clud­ing Guyana. $11 bil­lion was “re­port­ed due but un­col­lect­ed.” Who’s re­spon­si­ble?

Those who abide by the law and pay tax­es are be­ing asked to en­dure lead­er­ship fail­ures.

These cit­i­zens are not treat­ed fair­ly.