Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A date will be giv­en on Mon­day for an ex­ten­sion of the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line for prop­er­ty tax pay­ments and by the end of Oc­to­ber, it is ex­pect­ed that the Board of In­land Rev­enue will be able to ac­cept pay­ments by Au­to­mat­ed Clear­ing House (ACH) bank trans­fer cred­it card.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to queries from UNC MP Rod­ney Charles on the is­sue of prop­er­ty tax pay­ments and a pos­si­ble ex­ten­sion to the month-end dead­line.

Both Im­bert and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley replied to Op­po­si­tion queries on this, af­ter chaos and long lines have been ex­pe­ri­enced out­side Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) of­fices by cit­i­zens seek­ing to pay their tax­es.

Charles told Im­bert that the BIR Di­vi­sion Of­fice at Princes Town—where Charles said he paid his tax —has one cashier to re­ceive prop­er­ty tax pay­ments from hun­dreds of con­stituents dai­ly. He asked what ur­gent steps are be­ing tak­en to im­prove the pay­ment process.

Im­bert said there are a num­ber of rev­enue of­fices all over Trinidad and To­ba­go. In Trinidad, he said there are two in San Fer­nan­do and two in Port-of-Spain at the BIR head­quar­ters. He said there is al­so one of­fice each in San­gre Grande, Siparia, Ch­agua­nas, Tu­na­puna, Cou­va, Rio Claro, Ma­yaro, Point Fortin and La Brea.

“In Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, pay­ments are be­ing ac­cept­ed us­ing Linx ma­chines, in ad­di­tion to cash, per­son­al cheques and man­agers’ cheques. So pay­ment pro­ce­dures for pay­ment of prop­er­ty tax aren’t lim­it­ed to cash,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert al­so cit­ed re­cent state­ments on what the min­istry is do­ing to deal with on­line so­lu­tions such as bank trans­fers us­ing ACH cred­it card pay­ments.

“And I ex­pect by the end of Oc­to­ber, the Board of In­land Rev­enue will be able to ac­cept pay­ments by ACH bank trans­fer cred­it card,” Im­bert added.

Im­bert said con­sid­er­a­tion is al­so be­ing giv­en to an ex­ten­sion of pay­ment time.

“On Mon­day, the ex­tend­ed date will be an­nounced,” he said.

Charles, who is now seat­ed low­er down the UNC’s bench, had ear­li­er en­gaged in ban­ter with Im­bert.

“I trust the min­is­ter’s here, it’s so far I can’t see him. In case you’re here, please speak loud­ly so I can hear you,” Charles said with laugh­ter.

Im­bert, al­so laugh­ing, said, “I was look­ing to see who asked the ques­tion ... when I looked (at Charles’ for­mer seat), I said ‘where’s this man?’ And when I look so, I see the mem­ber ‘dong’ so ...”

PM hap­py at re­sponse

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, re­ply­ing to UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s queries on the is­sue, said, “The Gov­ern­ment is pleased that so very many cit­i­zens have made it their du­ty to try to com­ply, notwith­stand­ing the ef­forts put in­to en­cour­ag­ing them not to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s im­prove­ment mea­sures.”

Row­ley ac­knowl­edged that at the end of the month there was a con­flu­ence of tax­pay­ers at­tempt­ing to make var­i­ous pay­ments, both prop­er­ty tax and the usu­al nor­mal tax­es that are paid.

“As a re­sult of this en­thu­si­asm which fo­cused at the end of the month, the Gov­ern­ment did con­sid­er some sort of ad­just­ment is re­quired and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter will ad­dress that very ear­ly in the com­ing week,” Row­ley said.

Hinds: Cops watch­ing banks, rev­enue of­fices

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds al­so replied to UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s query on mea­sures be­ing un­der­tak­en by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to pro­tect cit­i­zens, fol­low­ing “wide­spread se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns” over the with­draw­al of cash from banks for tax pay­ments.

Hinds said the Com­mis­sion­er of the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment had raised the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty a long time ago with the po­lice, “and the po­lice are sen­si­tive to the is­sues and treat­ing with it”.

“This is tak­ing place in the Cen­tral, South­west­ern, East­ern, Port-of-Spain, South­ern, To­ba­go and North­ern and To­ba­go po­lice di­vi­sions, where dis­trict rev­enue of­fices are lo­cat­ed. So far, based on in­for­ma­tion avail­able to me, there has not been any re­port of any par­tic­u­lar rob­bery or lar­ce­ny in re­la­tion to the mat­ter (raised by Mooni­lal),” Hinds added.

Hinds said, “Gen­er­al­ly, banks, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing dis­trict rev­enue of­fices, re­ceive spe­cial fo­cus from the TTPS. They have in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty and the TTPS deals with is­sues out­side of that­—there’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on the ba­sis of in­tel­li­gence be­tween the in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty and the TTPS.

“Re­cent­ly, the po­lice have an­nounced and they have, in fact, in­ten­si­fied their an­ti-crime strate­gies, in­clud­ing mo­bile and foot pa­trols, the ‘joint army/po­lice’ pa­trols and in­clu­sive of plain clothes pa­trols, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to those kinds of in­sti­tu­tions tar­get­ing known and pro­lif­ic of­fend­ers, in­clud­ing the reg­u­lar ‘snatch­ers’ and rob­bers known to them in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties and hotspots.”

Hinds said around height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty pe­ri­ods like Christ­mas, Car­ni­val, long week­ends and fort­nights (pay days), the TTPS height­ens its ac­tiv­i­ty very gen­er­al­ly.

“Wher­ev­er per­sons are gath­ered and there are large amounts of mon­ey known to the po­lice, height­ened se­cu­ri­ty by the po­lice is al­ways the prac­tice.”