KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With the Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ing to col­lect $191 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax, the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) has al­ready re­ceived $105 mil­lion from prop­er­ty own­ers. In a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert re­vealed that, as of yes­ter­day, prop­er­ty own­ers paid $105,609,387 for 104,102 prop­er­ties. Break­ing it down, he said $13 mil­lion came from prop­er­ty own­ers with­in the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, $13 mil­lion; San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, $9 mil­lion; San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, $9 mil­lion; Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, $9 mil­lion; Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, $8 mil­lion; and Port-of-Spain City, $3 mil­lion.

The largest pay­ment of $18 mil­lion came from the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. With these pay­ments cross­ing 50 per cent of the ex­pect­ed rev­enue, Im­bert said the Min­istry of Fi­nance (MoF) fore­sees it climb­ing to $191 mil­lion. Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed that the Board of In­land Rev­enue’s (BIR) dead­line for de­liv­er­ing prop­er­ty tax no­tices to prop­er­ty own­ers has been ex­tend­ed to No­vem­ber 29.

He clar­i­fied that this no­tice is not the val­u­a­tion no­tice, but the prop­er­ty tax no­tice. Ex­plain­ing the dif­fer­ence, he said the No­tice of Val­u­a­tion that prop­er­ty own­ers re­ceive from the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion in­forms them of their prop­er­ty’s An­nu­al Rental Val­ue (ARV). It is not the No­tice of As­sess­ment (NOA) from the BIR, out­lin­ing the tax payable, which is two per cent of the ARV.

“I am aware that peo­ple con­tin­ue to get a lit­tle mixed up be­tween a no­tice of an An­nu­al Rental Val­ue and a prop­er­ty tax as­sess­ment no­tice. The dead­line that has been ex­tend­ed is the dead­line for the Board of In­land Rev­enue to de­liv­er prop­er­ty tax as­sess­ment no­tices. As a re­sult, we have ex­tend­ed the time for pay­ment with­out penal­ty from No­vem­ber 29 to De­cem­ber 20,” Im­bert said.

There are con­cerns over de­lays in re­ceiv­ing no­tices, with some prop­er­ty own­ers wor­ried about in­cur­ring penal­ties for miss­ing the pay­ment dead­line. One writer to Guardian Me­dia said de­spite sub­mit­ting all re­quired doc­u­men­ta­tion, she still awaits the no­tice to pro­ceed with pay­ment.

“Re­peat­ed vis­its to the Port-of-Spain of­fice have yield­ed the same re­sponse: Some­one will call, some­one will vis­it, and no­tice will be sent. As the year draws to a close, this de­lay is caus­ing un­nec­es­sary anx­i­ety and po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial hard­ship,” the writer stat­ed.

The writer urged the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion to ex­pe­dite the process of is­su­ing the no­tices.

Im­bert ac­knowl­edged this con­cern and as­sured that prop­er­ty own­ers who do not re­ceive an NOA will not face penal­ties and in­ter­est. He stat­ed he would need to make ap­pro­pri­ate amend­ments to al­low those peo­ple to pay lat­er.

“At this time, they do not have to pay once they do not get it by No­vem­ber 29, the end of this month, be­cause peo­ple are a lit­tle wor­ried. They have not re­ceived their tax as­sess­ment no­tice, or they have an old one with the three per cent rate, or they on­ly have a val­u­a­tion no­tice, and they are wor­ried. Do not wor­ry. If you have not re­ceived this, you do not have to pay at this point.”

Im­bert al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that there are Linx (point of sale) ma­chines at all IRD Re­gion­al Of­fices and Dis­trict Rev­enue Of­fices. These of­fices al­so ac­cept cash and cheques.

With on­line pay­ments now ac­cept­ed, he said the MoF ex­pects to near the $191 mil­lion tar­get as it moves to­wards De­cem­ber 20. The MoF launched its on­line pay­ment op­tion for First Cit­i­zens Bank cus­tomers to pay their prop­er­ty tax via the First Cit­i­zens On­line Bank­ing and Mo­bile App on Oc­to­ber 30. Im­bert said Re­pub­lic Bank’s on­line pay­ment should come on stream by Fri­day, with oth­er banks join­ing short­ly af­ter.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that of­fer­ing on­line pay­ments was not straight­for­ward, as banks im­pose a ser­vice charge on trans­fers and rev­enue should not be de­duct­ed. This cre­at­ed chal­lenges in trans­fer­ring pay­ees’ rev­enue to the Trea­sury. Con­se­quent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to cov­er these charges.

“If you pay your phone bill or your elec­tric­i­ty bill on­line, you are go­ing to get a charge, and the ser­vice provider may not get the full amount. They may get, just like in a store when you are go­ing to use your deb­it card, you know the item may cost $100, and the bank may take out $2 for pro­vid­ing that ser­vice through Linx. The prob­lem with rev­enue is that you can­not deduct any­thing from it, so what we have de­cid­ed to do is that the Gov­ern­ment, in the first in­stance, will pay the ser­vice charge on top of the tax.”

Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed that prop­er­ty tax would be al­lo­cat­ed to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions to use for goods and ser­vices and their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. He said they would not be able to use it for per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture and that some leg­isla­tive ad­just­ments would al­low the MoF to dis­trib­ute the funds over the com­ing months.

Re­gard­ing To­ba­go, Im­bert said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Act re­quires that the THA re­tains all To­ba­go rev­enue for its use. He stat­ed that the THA will col­lect prop­er­ty tax on the is­land.