Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

There will soon be an on­line pay­ment op­tion for those tired of wait­ing in long lines to pay prop­er­ty tax.

This was con­firmed by both Min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry Bri­an Man­ning and Tu­na­puna MP and Deputy House Speak­er Es­mond Forde yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Man­ning said there are 400,000 homes reg­is­tered, with some 175,000 peo­ple re­ceiv­ing no­tices that they need­ed to pay their prop­er­ty tax.

Asked about the long lines at the nine pay­ment cen­tres and the com­plaints over the lack of on­line pay­ment op­tions, Man­ning said that is be­ing ad­dressed.

“We are con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op oth­er meth­ods of pay­ment, one that will in­clude on­line op­tions that peo­ple can pay maybe through their bank­ing branch­es or on­line from their com­put­ers or phones and that is be­ing rolled out,” Man­ning said.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment is “well aware” of the long lines at the pay cen­tre and this too is be­ing worked on. He said the Gov­ern­ment did not ex­pect a rush to pay, but not­ed some pay­ment cen­tres may not be ful­ly equipped as it per­tains to staffing to ad­dress the num­ber of per­sons flock­ing to venues to pay their tax­es.

Asked why on­line pay­ment was not done be­fore, as there is a Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion to spear­head such things, Man­ning said it is not a sim­ple sit­u­a­tion and that is now be­ing de­vel­oped.

“There are many oth­er sit­u­a­tions hap­pen­ing at the same time. We are al­so mov­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) and oth­er things, so it was very com­plex to have done that pre­vi­ous­ly, but we are work­ing to get it done go­ing for­ward. That is as much as I can say now. It will hap­pen and it’s go­ing to be im­ple­ment­ed.”

Speak­ing at the Tu­na­puna Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, Forde, who or­gan­ised three tents and 300 chairs for those who turned up to pay their prop­er­ty tax, re­it­er­at­ed that the on­line op­tion will soon be made avail­able.

Forde, who vis­it­ed the of­fice to en­sure his name was list­ed to pay his prop­er­ty tax, said the long lines were a con­cern to him, so he do­nat­ed the tents and chairs and had a spon­sor do­nate wa­ter. The com­pli­men­ta­ry ser­vice will con­tin­ue un­til Sep­tem­ber 30, when the dead­line for the pay­ment of tax­es is due.

The men spoke mo­ments af­ter the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­missed the fi­nal ap­peal in a law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) brought by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­ria Dho­ray.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that the move was not un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, paving the way for Gov­ern­ment to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise the au­thor­i­ty.

The Law Lords said: “The trans­fer of rev­enue func­tions to the Au­thor­i­ty pur­suant to the Act does not breach any im­plied pro­vi­sion or as­sump­tion on which the Con­sti­tu­tion is based.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the judg­ment, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert took to so­cial me­dia to cel­e­brate, say­ing: “WE WON THE CASE! This re­quired tremen­dous ef­fort against the re­lent­less op­po­si­tion from the UNC and the PSA. Now we can mod­ernise rev­enue col­lec­tion.”

While those who spoke to Guardian Me­dia at the Tu­na­puna Com­plex most­ly com­plained about the time it took to pay prop­er­ty tax, the amount they paid and the lack of an elec­tron­ic pay­ment sys­tem, pen­sion­er Fred­er­ick Gray said this was part of “teething prob­lems.” How­ev­er, he said the pay­ment process is some­thing that needs to be prop­er­ly planned out.

“The thing about it is the ad­min­is­tra­tion of any­thing in the coun­try takes a cer­tain time frame, you can­not get every­thing as you want it to be. I ex­pect this, I am say­ing this, I an­tic­i­pate that we are go­ing to get an ex­ten­sion. That is the on­ly ben­e­fi­cial thing to do,” Gray said.