On the eve of the dead­line for sub­mis­sion of Prop­er­ty Tax forms yes­ter­day, prop­er­ty own­ers were giv­en a re­prieve af­ter the dead­line was ex­tend­ed to Jan­u­ary 31, 2022.

The an­nounce­ment was made through a pub­lic no­tice is­sued by the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. The dead­line was sup­posed to have been to­day, but there had been calls in some quar­ters for the dead­line to be ex­tend­ed.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning con­firmed the ex­ten­sion was grant­ed.

Last Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion MP David Lee’s query on a pos­si­ble ex­ten­sion of the dead­line, said any ex­ten­sion would have to take place on or be­fore No­vem­ber 30, “if it takes place at all.”

Im­bert said then that the to­tal num­ber of re­turns for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties at that time was 165,000. He ex­plained that un­der the law, 200,000 re­turns were need­ed be­fore the process of im­ple­men­ta­tion of Prop­er­ty Tax could start.

Home­own­ers who fail to meet the dead­line are guilty of a crim­i­nal of­fence and are li­able to a $5,000 fine.

The pub­lic no­tice stat­ed, “The Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions wish­es to ad­vise every per­son in pos­ses­sion of res­i­den­tial land, com­mer­cial land, agri­cul­ture land, or a com­bi­na­tion of any of the above (mixed use) with or with­out build­ings in Trinidad and To­ba­go for which a Re­turn is re­quired con­tain­ing the par­tic­u­lars re­quired by the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions that the dead­line has been ex­tend­ed from No­vem­ber 30, 2021, to Jan­u­ary 31, 2022.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to the ex­ten­sion, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the ex­ten­sion is much need­ed as every­one tries to sur­vive these per­ilous times giv­en the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said, “The Gov­ern­ment must be com­mend­ed for ex­tend­ing the dead­line for the sub­mis­sion of Prop­er­ty Tax forms. It shows an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the con­cerns of cit­i­zens.”

He added that the cham­ber sym­pa­this­es with mem­bers of so­ci­ety who are not in a po­si­tion to face this ad­di­tion­al ex­pense at this crit­i­cal time in a de­pressed econ­o­my.

“With the in­creas­ing cost of liv­ing and creep­ing food in­fla­tion, the so­ci­ety needs some breath­ing room.”

Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty could now fo­cus on the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son and aim to par­tial­ly re­cov­er the tremen­dous fi­nan­cial loss­es suf­fered over the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od. Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day re­ceived com­plaints from mem­bers of the pub­lic that they were hav­ing is­sues log­ging on to the Prop­er­ty Tax web­site and it ap­peared to have crashed at one point.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed the Fi­nance Min­istry’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion De­part­ment said they had re­ceived no re­ports and the web­site ap­peared to be func­tion­ing prop­er­ly.