Gail Alexan­der

?The UNC will scrap the prop­er­ty tax when it forms the next Gov­ern­ment, UNC deputy leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised yes­ter­day. Speak­ing in yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on the tax, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said peo­ple do­ing the usu­al Christ­mas sea­son re­pairs–paint­ing, ren­o­va­tions or ad­di­tions to their homes–would be in­creas­ing the val­ue of their prop­er­ty and could risk high­er tax­es. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, deem­ing the tax a pover­ty tax, said the UNC would take the Gov­ern­ment to court if the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion was passed in the way it was cur­rent­ly framed. "This is the biggest con job I've ever seen," Per­sad- Bisses­sar said, adding she was not sup­port­ing the bill.

"Have a heart, it's Christ­mas time, hold back de­bate and roll this bill back and look at it again... but a UNC Gov­ern­ment will scrap the tax com­plete­ly," she said. Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of squan­der­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment was per­pe­trat­ing "eco­nom­ic ter­ror­ism" by pre­sent­ing the tax at a time of high food prices, in­fla­tion and oth­er hard­ships in T&T. She added: "This is Christ­mas, the time of giv­ing gifts, and here in Christ­mas week you are tak­ing mon­ey from the peo­ple at this time of giv­ing – you won't have hap­py cit­i­zens over this Christ­mas." Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­ject­ed that the tax would cause rents, mort­gage pay­ments and WASA rates to in­crease and UWI stu­dents would have to pay more for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

She said con­sumers al­so would have to pay more for goods and ser­vices since own­ers of com­mer­cial build­ings would have to pay the prop­er­ty tax. Crit­i­cis­ing last Fri­day's in­ci­dent, when peo­ple protest­ing the tax out­side the Par­lia­ment clashed with po­lice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "We saw what hap­pened when peo­ple raised their voic­es and were beat­en and bru­talised." She asked whether per­sons un­able to pay the prop­er­ty tax would be con­front­ed with a "mon­goose gang" who would break down their doors for the tax. "Will you be us­ing state re­sources to do this? You did it with the LSA and squat­ters... who is the Board of In­land Rev­enue to au­tho­rise peo­ple to break down doors?" she added.

She said she was con­cerned about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the bill. On the Uff in­quiry, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there was un­con­test­ed ev­i­dence against Ude­cott head Calder Hart. She called on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to fire Hart. Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Gov­ern­ment would be spend­ing $200 mil­lion in soft­ware to im­ple­ment mech­a­nisms to col­lect the tax. (GA)