Gail Alexan­der

?Land hous­ing church­es, school build­ings–in­clud­ing UWI–state build­ings and char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tions will be ex­empt from the prop­er­ty tax, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment's Prop­er­ty Tax Bill. The bill, which was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day, will be de­bat­ed on Fri­day. The bill's 57 claus­es ad­dress var­i­ous is­sues in the amend­ed tax law, in­clud­ing prepa­ra­tion of as­sess­ment rolls, and lands which are not as­sess­ment rolls, as­sess­ment of tax, own­ers of land li­able to pay tax, ex­emp­tion from tax and con­di­tions for ob­jec­tions and ap­peal. Un­der land which is ex­empt from the tax, the bill notes that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter can whol­ly or par­tial­ly ex­empt a par­tic­u­lar class of land from the tax.

The bill lists the fol­low­ing as tax-ex­empt:

1. land used ex­clu­sive­ly as church­es/ceme­ter­ies;

2. school build­ings, of­fices, play­grounds, UWI, COSTATT, UTT, state land;

3. Land used for ed­u­ca­tion­al, phil­antroph­ic/re­li­gious pur­pos­es, or owned/oc­cu­pied by char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tions;

4. land used for pub­lic hos­pi­tals and re­lief of the poor, whether pub­licly/pri­vate­ly-owned;

5. land owned/oc­cu­pied by a for­eign gov­ern­ment/in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion of which T&T is a mem­ber.

6. Landown­ers have 21 days in which to file ob­jec­tions to taxed amounts.

Grounds for ob­jec­tion in­clude the fol­low­ing:

1. that the an­nu­al rate­able val­ue of land on a val­u­a­tion roll is in­cor­rect/un­fair;

2. land should not have been on val­u­a­tion roll or land omit­ted from the roll should be in­clud­ed.

3. that land in­clud­ed in a se­ries or com­plex of land units as a sin­gle land on the val­u­a­tion roll should be list­ed sep­a­rate­ly on the roll or omit­ted there­from.

4. land list­ed sep­a­rate­ly in/omit­ted from val­u­a­tion roll should be com­bined with one or more of a se­ries of com­plex of land units and list­ed as one sin­gle unit of land.

5. as­sessed tax was wrong. (GA)