The on­line pay­ment of prop­er­ty tax will come on stream from to­day, as­sured Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Var­i­ous sec­tors com­plained bit­ter­ly about the pay­ment not be­ing made on­line, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­creas­ing num­ber of rob­beries tak­ing place in the coun­try.

Im­bert an­nounced this method at the T&T Stock Ex­change Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

“I un­der­took to in­tro­duce a fa­cil­i­ty for on­line pay­ments for prop­er­ty tax by to­day Oc­to­ber 31. I am pleased to re­port that First Cit­i­zens Bank went live yes­ter­day to pro­vide an elec­tron­ic bank­ing fa­cil­i­ty to al­low prop­er­ty own­ers to pay their prop­er­ty tax on­line in the same way they cur­rent­ly pay their util­i­ty bills. The oth­er com­mer­cial banks will fol­low with their e-bank­ing plat­forms short­ly, and short­ly, pay­ment of tax­es on­line by cred­it card will be fa­cil­i­tat­ed,” Im­bert de­tailed.

He not­ed by us­ing state-of-the-art dig­i­tal so­lu­tions and di­ver­si­fy­ing in­vest­ment chan­nels, T&T is unique­ly po­si­tioned to in­crease the in­no­va­tion and re­silience of our cap­i­tal mar­ket.

“This strate­gic fo­cus al­lows us to draw on a broad­er spec­trum of in­vestors and pro­mote en­tre­pre­neur­ial growth in sev­er­al in­dus­tries. We can build a more in­clu­sive fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem that em­pow­ers all stake­hold­ers, pro­motes sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth, and es­tab­lish­es Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­gion­al leader in cap­i­tal mar­ket de­vel­op­ment, by pri­ori­tis­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” he stat­ed.

Im­bert al­so an­nounced that he will be trav­el­ling to the head­quar­ters of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) in Paris, France, next week to sign the Mul­ti­lat­er­al Con­ven­tion on Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tance in Tax Mat­ters.

“Since based on the progress we have made in this year 2024 to­wards be­com­ing com­pli­ant with the tax in­for­ma­tion shar­ing re­quire­ments of the Glob­al Fo­rum and the EU, the mem­bers of the OECD have in­vit­ed T&T to be­come a par­ty to this very im­por­tant in­ter­na­tion­al treaty.”

He em­pha­sised that this was no easy task and by sign­ing and quick­ly rat­i­fy­ing the con­ven­tion, T&T will be send­ing a strong sig­nal of its com­mit­ment to fight off­shore tax eva­sion and avoid­ance.

“We are well on our way, there­fore, to com­ing off the Glob­al Fo­rum and EU tax black­lists, which we ex­pect to achieve in 2025, and which is key to our ef­forts to de­vel­op our cap­i­tal mar­kets. Re­turn­ing to reg­u­la­tion, main­tain­ing strict reg­u­la­to­ry guide­lines cre­ates a mar­ket that gives both do­mes­tic and for­eign in­vestors trust and con­fi­dence and we are com­mit­ted to this pol­i­cy, which demon­strates how se­ri­ous­ly we take the build­ing of a ro­bust, trust­wor­thy, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized cap­i­tal mar­ket,” Im­bert added.