Yvonne Webb

Cit­i­zens on rental or rent to own plans with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) will not have to pay prop­er­ty tax­es for homes they are oc­cu­py­ing.

The HDC will foot this bill for them, says HDC cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Mau­risa Find­lay.

"It's our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay for prop­er­ties that are on rental and rent to own," Find­lay told the Guardian.

How­ev­er, when HDC homes are con­veyed to home­own­ers they will be giv­en a li­cence to oc­cu­py and will have to pay their own prop­er­ty tax­es, Find­lay said.

These HDC home­own­ers would be taxed on the val­ue of the hous­ing es­tate they lived in, she said.

They could con­tact their mort­gage com­pa­nies for more de­tails, Find­lay said.

Will ob­ject to steep in­creas­es

Mean­while, res­i­dents in north Trinidad are hop­ing they won't see a very steep in­crease in prop­er­ty tax­es come 2017.

The own­er of a val­u­a­tions and re­al es­tate com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in the area, re­quest­ing anonymi­ty, said many of his clients have said they did not mind pay­ing prop­er­ty tax­es once they were fair.

He said the old tax­es they were pay­ing were based on out­dat­ed as­sess­ments of the val­ue of their prop­er­ties and, as such, the rates were not very high

The source said the val­ue of prop­er­ties in cer­tain ar­eas went up over the last five years or so.

"In ar­eas where there is a high de­mand for prop­er­ty, like Good­wood Park in West­moor­ings and Lange Park in Ch­agua­nas, the rental val­ue of prop­er­ties will be high­er than in ar­eas like San­gre Grande and oth­er rur­al dis­tricts.

"There­fore the old sev­en-and-a-half per cent they were pay­ing on out­dat­ed as­sess­ments would not have been very high.

"The new three per cent, though seem­ing to be a re­duc­tion, may ac­tu­al­ly work out to be high­er be­cause of mod­ern as­sess­ments," the source added.

Asked what was the an­nu­al rental val­ue of an av­er­age home, he asked: "What is an av­er­age home?"

The source said it was dif­fi­cult to make such an as­sess­ment and added his clients have said they "will ob­ject" if the new tax­es were steep.

He ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment to be mind­ful of that.

Con­fused

Res­i­dents of Cou­va and Ch­agua­nas are con­fused and un­clear how the new prop­er­ty tax­es will be im­ple­ment­ed.

Chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), Hen­ry Awong, said peo­ple in the coun­try­side ar­eas do not know how the rental val­ue of their prop­er­ties would be as­sessed.

"You don't have too many peo­ple rent­ing in coun­try ar­eas," he said.

"Peo­ple are al­so see­ing it as 'More tax again'," he added.

Awong said un­til the col­lec­tion of land and build­ing tax­es was dis­con­tin­ued in 2009, res­i­dents were pay­ing min­i­mal tax­es at a Board of In­land Rev­enue of­fice in Cou­va.

He said part of the Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed ref­or­ma­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment was that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions would as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the col­lec­tion of tax­es.

Awong said to date the CT­TRC had not been in­formed of any such fu­ture role and there ex­ist­ed no de­part­ment to deal with the col­lec­tion of tax­es.

Ch­agua­nas may­or, Gopaul Boodan, said burgess­es have ex­pressed con­cerns about where their tax­es would go.

"Many of them are say­ing they would like to see the tax­es col­lect­ed used for the im­prove­ment of their com­mu­ni­ties," he said.

Boodan said the Rates and Tax­es De­part­ment at the Ch­agua­nas Cor­po­ra­tion had been shar­ing the bur­den of tax col­lec­tion with the Board of In­land Rev­enue in the area un­til it was stopped.

He said, they too, have not been ap­prised of any new role they would have to pay in the col­lec­tion of prop­er­ty tax­es and just didn't know how it was go­ing to work.

He sur­mised the new Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty may as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this.

Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions

The of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions, be­lieved to be the body which will as­sess the val­ue of prop­er­ties all over T&T, de­clined to speak to the T&T Guardian on the mat­ter.

A staffer di­rect­ed all queries to the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment at the Min­istry of Fi­nance un­der which they fall.

How­ev­er, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors have ex­pressed con­cern about the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions' of­fice to pre­pare for the col­lec­tion of prop­er­ty tax­es next year.

"At the last count, there were over 400,000 prop­er­ties in T&T. The rental val­ue of all these prop­er­ties will have to be worked out.

"Whether they can do this is time for the next fis­cal year re­mains to be seen," a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or said.

He said res­i­dents may be asked to make their own de­c­la­ra­tions of the val­ue of their prop­er­ties but fore­saw prob­lems with that.

The source said of con­cern to many was the lack of men­tion of non-res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties (in­dus­tri­al) in the prop­er­ty tax pro­pos­als. He said squat­ters may be spared for fear that as­sess­ing them may le­git­imise them.

New tax in­voic­es

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, said prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tions will be ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed in 2017 based on the Prop­er­ty Tax Act 2009 and with mi­nor amend­ments to the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act.

How­ev­er, a flat rate of three per cent from the old Act will be ap­plied in the mean­time.

He said there would be ex­emp­tions for home­own­ers on the ba­sis of abil­i­ty to pay.

Im­bert said new tax in­voic­es would be is­sued in 2017 sub­se­quent to the com­ple­tion of the val­u­a­tion roll pre­pared by the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions and the as­sess­ment roll pre­pared by the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion.

He said un­der the Val­u­a­tions of Land Act every own­er was re­quired to sub­mit a re­turn which would be used by the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion to cal­cu­late the an­nu­al rental val­ue.

If that was not done the di­vi­sion would pre­pare its own val­u­a­tion, he added.