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RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

Calls are be­ing made for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the dead­line for the sub­mis­sion of prop­er­ty tax forms be­yond No­vem­ber 30.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran and vice-chair­man Ri­car­do Mo­hammed is­sued a state­ment over the week­end say­ing home­own­ers were find­ing it dif­fi­cult to com­plete the form be­cause of con­tin­u­ing eco­nom­ic up­heaval.

Prop­er­ty own­ers can face a fine of five thou­sand dol­lars if they fail to com­plete the form by No­vem­ber 30.

How­ev­er, the con­fed­er­a­tion says the tim­ing for sub­mis­sion of the Prop­er­ty Tax Forms is dif­fi­cult.

“Busi­ness own­ers are fo­cus­ing on dri­ving busi­ness sales dur­ing this Christ­mas pe­ri­od fresh off the heels of the State of Emer­gency. In ad­di­tion to this, con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to the fact that there is an elec­tion in To­ba­go,” the con­fed­er­a­tion ex­ec­u­tives said.

“Busi­ness­es are ad­just­ing prices due to VAT re­moval, man­ag­ing and ex­e­cut­ing de­liv­er­ies, and man­ag­ing in­bound lo­gis­tics with dis­rup­tions to the glob­al sup­ply chain, which is lead­ing to dis­rup­tions and de­lays in ship­ments,” they not­ed.

“Bear­ing in mind that many busi­ness­es are in re­cov­ery mode, if not sur­vival mode, for its mem­bers and that em­ploy­ees and the gen­er­al pub­lic are fo­cused on fi­nan­cial and fam­i­ly mat­ters at this time, we would ask the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er an ex­ten­sion in­to 2022 when busi­ness and per­son­al sit­u­a­tions should nor­malise,” the con­fed­er­a­tion ex­ec­u­tives said.

It not­ed that shop­ping malls will al­so need some more time, as it would take ad­di­tion­al re­sources to ac­cu­rate­ly cap­ture and map out the nec­es­sary da­ta for ac­cu­rate sub­mis­sion to the tax au­thor­i­ties. 

The con­fed­er­a­tion said it will en­cour­age its mem­bers to com­ply with all Prop­er­ty Tax laws. 

“How­ev­er, the CR­BC is ask­ing for an ex­ten­sion in­to 2022 for the ef­fec­tive and ac­cu­rate pro­cess­ing and sub­mit­ting of prop­er­ty tax forms,” the ex­ec­u­tives added.

The Prop­er­ty Tax forms were is­sued in Sep­tem­ber. Pub­lic an­nounce­ments were is­sued in all dai­ly news­pa­pers in­di­cat­ing that any oc­cu­pi­er of prop­er­ty must sub­mit a val­u­a­tion re­turn form by No­vem­ber 30 or face a pos­si­ble $5,000 fine.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance has in­di­cat­ed on its so­cial me­dia pages that any­one own­ing res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial or agri­cul­tur­al land, or any com­bi­na­tion of such, must sub­mit a re­turn con­tain­ing the par­tic­u­lars re­quired by the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions on or be­fore No­vem­ber 30, 2021.

“Un­der Sec­tion 32 of the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act, fail­ure to com­ply with this re­quire­ment con­sti­tutes a crim­i­nal of­fence which is pun­ish­able by a fine of $5,000,” the min­istry said.