Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes @guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert be­lieves one of the rea­sons there has been such vo­cif­er­ous op­po­si­tion to­wards the prop­er­ty tax is be­cause peo­ple do not want to ex­plain their wealth, as it will ex­pose “un­just en­rich­ment”.

Speak­ing at the Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter at Ex­o­dus Pa­n­yard in Tu­na­puna last night, Im­bert not­ed the loud­est voic­es against prop­er­ty tax were those in the most “up­scale” ar­eas of the coun­try, whom he ad­mit­ted would pay more. But, he said it ap­peared they al­so want­ed to pay the same tax as peo­ple in ar­eas such as Bel­mont, Co­corite, or Tu­na­puna.

“I can­not un­der­stand what all this bac­cha­nal is all about. I can­not. Es­pe­cial­ly when we re­duce the tax. They mak­ing more noise when we re­duce the tax. They more vex. It has to be what is called un­just en­rich­ment and ex­plain your wealth,” Im­bert said.

“They have fel­las work­ing for a small salary but liv­ing in a man­sion. You have peo­ple own­ing five, ten, and 20 prop­er­ties. How did they get them?” he mused.

Im­bert said many peo­ple owned cash busi­ness­es where they could “hide” their tax­able in­come.

“You could hide your in­come be­cause it’s in­vis­i­ble, but you can’t hide a house,” Im­bert said. “Now we will know who owns what.”

Im­bert said it wasn’t for him to know, but it may raise the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties. “But if you find out a lit­tle clerk some­where has ten hous­es worth 20 mil­lion dol­lars, well, that’s for some­body else to check that out. That’s what op­po­si­tion to prop­er­ty tax is all about.”

On Mon­day, the Sen­ate passed the Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 with help from one in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor. The pur­pose of the bill was to re­duce the rate of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax from three per cent to two per cent.

By the num­bers, Im­bert not­ed, about 60,000 peo­ple at the low­est end of the spec­trum would pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly $324 a year in prop­er­ty tax, while two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tion, around 250,000 peo­ple, would pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly $700 a year.

He said peo­ple liv­ing in mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar hous­es may pay around $7,000 a year in prop­er­ty tax.

Im­bert de­scribed the prop­er­ty tax as a “pro­gres­sive tax”.

“The more mon­ey you have, the more as­sets you have, the more you pay,” Im­bert ex­plained.

One of the rec­om­men­da­tions made in the Sen­ate by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards was to have a method to help peo­ple on the low­er end of the eco­nom­ic scale who want­ed to chal­lenge the val­u­a­tion of their prop­er­ty. Im­bert recog­nised it could cost mon­ey to chal­lenge the val­u­a­tion ex­er­cise be­cause it would re­quire the chal­lenger to bring a pri­vate val­u­a­tor to show the val­ue of their prop­er­ty to be sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment. Im­bert said go­ing for­ward they would con­sid­er a sup­port sys­tem sim­i­lar to le­gal aid where, fol­low­ing a means test, a val­u­a­tor may be pro­vid­ed.

In his com­ments at the meet­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said he would do all that is nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion on prop­er­ty tax to not be mis­guid­ed by mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion or oth­ers.

PM stumped by ques­tion on ‘hit squad’

When ques­tioned about the ex­is­tence of a po­lice or SSA “hit squad” by an au­di­ence mem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley seemed per­plexed.

The prime min­is­ter mas­saged his eyes and choked on his words a lit­tle be­fore re­spond­ing that the ques­tion need­ed an an­swer, but he was un­able to pro­vide one at that mo­ment.

“We have been en­gaged in re­cent times in a deep dive through in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the state se­cu­ri­ty ma­chin­ery,” the Prime Min­is­ter said. “And as of to­day, there’s suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to con­vince us that some pub­lic of­fi­cials who have had ac­cess to gov­ern­ment equip­ment and firearms may have been in­volved in crim­i­nal con­duct. I can say no more at this time; the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.”