Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark brought the Massy con­tro­ver­sy in­to the Sen­ate on Tues­day as he wad­ed in­to the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing for­eign ex­change, prop­er­ty tax and oth­er is­sues. Mark told the Sen­ate the UNC would nev­er sup­port the PNM’s ver­sion of the prop­er­ty tax.

Speak­ing dur­ing the de­bate on the Fi­nance Bill, which was lat­er passed, Mark said, “We’ll not sup­port and will nev­er sup­port this PNM ver­sion of the prop­er­ty tax, we’ll re­place it ... we’ll re­peal it. So the peo­ple can be as­sured the UNC will ad­dress their con­cerns on this dra­con­ian mea­sure.”

Mark said re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions will be the ‘watch­man’ on prop­er­ty tax, “They’ll be­come the po­lice­men and will ‘po­lice’ pay­ment of the tax and when you don’t pay, cor­po­ra­tions have to pro­vide names of own­ers who fail to meet their oblig­a­tions.”

Mark al­so not­ed the pro­ce­dure for high in­ter­est and prop­er­ty for­fei­ture.

He said the “non­sense” of de­fer­ral for pen­sion­ers leav­ing it to heirs to pay the tax will mean a bur­den for­ev­er on the next gen­er­a­tion.

“That’s what slav­ery was about, I thought we abol­ished that but the PNM seem to have rein­tro­duced it.”

Mark said there are in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial prop­er­ty own­ers who can af­ford to pay but were giv­en a “bligh” and on­ly res­i­den­tial own­ers were tar­get­ed by the tax.

He asked if the 200,000 peo­ple on the val­u­a­tion rolls were sub­sid­ing in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial own­ers as well as the oth­er 200,000 prop­er­ty own­ers who were sup­posed to be on the rolls since T&T was ini­tial­ly sup­posed to have 400,000 on the rolls, “This cannnot be fair!” Mark de­clared.

Mark added the Fi­nance bill was a Christ­mas gift, not for the poor, but for “PNM fi­nanciers.” He added he couldn’t get fund­ing for over­seas, as oth­ers “who are mess­ing with the dead” were get­ting tens of thou­sands of US cur­ren­cy. He said the bill’s busi­ness in­cen­tives were to aid ex­port, but he ques­tioned why T&T’s Forex was be­ing used to give peo­ple “to do obeah and bizarre rit­u­als.” Mark called on UWI’s chan­cel­lor who he said was Massy’s chair­man and al­so called on Massy’s CEO Ger­vase Warn­er to ex­plain claims made by a Massy ex­ec­u­tive.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj asked when in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial as­pects of the tax will come in­to ef­fect for prop­er­ty tax since she as­sumed this would be in­tro­duced very soon af­ter res­i­den­tial tax­es.

Ma­haraj made a strong case to have sys­tems in the tax in­cen­tive for cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship for schools, to en­sure that schools most in need of such as­sis­tance, re­ceive it.

Sug­gest­ing a pri­or­i­ty list, she said the peo­ple who make those de­ci­sions like­ly came from pres­tige, bet­ter-off schools and the mea­sure must be un­der­pinned by the min­istry’s as­sess­ment of the schools that are most in need of cor­po­rate sup­port.

Ma­haraj, who had reser­va­tions about how the in­cen­tive might be im­ple­ment­ed, warned against it widen­ing the gap be­tween the bet­ter-off schools and oth­ers. Rec­om­mend­ing a re­view of the mea­sure af­ter a year, Ma­haraj called for it to be an­chored in the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and the need to pro­mote an eq­ui­table ap­proach to the ex­pen­di­ture on ed­u­ca­tion by the cor­po­rate sec­tor.