Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Hop­ing for low­er prop­er­ty tax rates for home­own­ers.

Col­lec­tion of pay­ment of the hat­ed prop­er­ty tax was sus­pend­ed by the Gov­ern­ment from yes­ter­day—and it’s raised hope that a pro­posed amend­ment to the Prop­er­ty Tax law be­ing laid in Par­lia­ment this af­ter­noon might low­er the tax rate.

The bill be­ing laid in Par­lia­ment to­day is ex­pect­ed to make changes to some parts of the Prop­er­ty Tax Act, in­clud­ing on as­sess­ment and the three per cent rate of tax­a­tion in­volved in the tax, sources said.

The bill will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day. This, af­ter yes­ter­day’s de­vel­op­ment—two weeks af­ter the March 1 start date for pay­ment of the tax—where signs were post­ed at Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) of­fices in­di­cat­ing that pay­ments were sus­pend­ed.

Signs, in­clud­ing with mis­pelling, stat­ed: “NO­TICE—With Im­me­di­ate ef­fect, the prop­er­ty tax payements (sic) sus­pend­ed un­til futher (sic) no­tice”.

The Fi­nance Min­istry’s Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion did as­sess­ment of prop­er­ties on the Val­u­a­tion Rolls in re­cent years and be­gan is­su­ing as­sess­ment no­tices since last Oc­to­ber.

The BIR was to have sub­se­quent­ly is­sued no­tices of the lev­el of tax payable, based on Val­u­a­tion as­sess­ment, and col­lec­tion of the tax was to have start­ed on March 1. Last month, Fi­nance Min­istry of­fi­cials said BIR had start­ed is­su­ing no­tices.

Dead­line for pay­ment was to have been Sep­tem­ber 30, with in­ter­est ac­cru­ing on out­stand­ing pay­ments at the rate of 15 per cent from Oc­to­ber 1 up to the date of pay­ment. The BIR was al­so re­quired to is­sue non-pay­ment no­tices to ap­plic­a­ble landown­ers, in­form­ing them their land would “be dis­trained against or for­feit­ed” if the out­stand­ing amount wasn’t paid.

De­spite text queries and email, there was no word from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter or oth­ers—even Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley— yes­ter­day, on why the sus­pen­sion signs were post­ed at BIR of­fices.

Nor was there a re­ply on the rea­son for the sus­pen­sion of col­lec­tion, when pay­ments would be­gin and why sus­pen­sion no­tices were post­ed at BIR of­fices, mi­nus an ex­pla­na­tion from Gov­ern­ment on the rea­sons for the move be­fore­hand.

It was sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that changes were be­ing made to the Prop­er­ty Tax law and a “state­ment” might be “forth­com­ing”.

How­ev­er, a sub­se­quent no­tice is­sued by the Par­lia­ment re­gard­ing to­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting stat­ed that Leader of Gov­ern­ment’s House Busi­ness, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, had ad­vised that Gov­ern­ment in­tends to lay “An Act to Mend the Prop­er­ty Tax act Chp 76-04” in Par­lia­ment to­day.

This will be done in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s name. The next stage of the bill de­bate will be done on Mon­day, it was stat­ed.

Sources, pro­ject­ing that cer­tain pro­posed claus­es may per­tain to the three per cent tax rate payable on the An­nu­al Tax­able Val­ue (ATV) for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, hoped there would be a re­duc­tion to per­haps two per cent “at least, to al­le­vi­ate peo­ple’s fi­nan­cial prob­lems”. They said oth­er claus­es will al­low Fi­nance to change the dead­line for the is­su­ing of as­sess­ment let­ters from the cur­rent March dead­line to on/be­fore June 30.

There was no word on if Im­bert might make a state­ment on the bill in the House to­day.

The bill re­quires sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty votes for pas­sage and can be passed by Gov­ern­ment votes alone if nec­es­sary.

Robin­son-Reg­is didn’t re­ply yes­ter­day to texted query on it.

UNC: Govt forced to ‘cave’

Com­ment­ing on the no­tices of sus­pen­sion of col­lec­tion post­ed at BIR of­fices yes­ter­day, UNC MP Dave Tan­coo (Fi­nance spokesman) said, “The fact that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has been forced to make changes af­ter hav­ing ini­ti­at­ed im­ple­men­ta­tion of this an­ti-peo­ple piece of leg­is­la­tion is no sur­prise.

“How­ev­er it does not do enough. Im­ple­men­ta­tion has re­vealed a mas­sive amount of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and in­con­sis­ten­cies. The UNC re­mains res­olute that the en­tire prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion should be scrapped.

“More­over, the min­is­ter’s de­lib­er­ate re­fusal to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the mul­ti­ple re­ports which emerged on so­cial me­dia ear­li­er (yes­ter­day) is an open in­sult to the pop­u­la­tion.”

Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty leader Phillip Alexan­der, who post­ed a sus­pen­sion signs at a BIR of­fice on his so­cial me­dia ac­count yes­ter­day, stat­ed, “It’s not enough! Re­peal the prop­er­ty tax law al­to­geth­er!”

In a re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, UNC PRO Kirk Meighoo said, "The UNC calls on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly clear up the con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the no­tices cir­cu­lat­ing on­line and, ap­par­ent­ly, al­so in Gov­ern­ment of­fices, re­gard­ing the al­leged sus­pen­sion and/or al­ter­ation of the dread­ed Prop­er­ty Tax.

"We await fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion and de­tails from the Fi­nance Min­istry. Go­ing fur­ther, how­ev­er, the UNC urges the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly stop the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this wicked tax and re-im­ple­ment the pre­vi­ous (2009) Land and Build­ing Tax­es."

Will tax­es al­ready paid be re­fund­ed?

At a re­cent "Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter" event in San Fer­nan­do, PM Row­ley claimed the Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax and es­tab­lish the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty could de­prive T& Tof re­quired rev­enue and cause it to "seek help from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF)".

Im­bert, in the 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, said the to­tal amount of prop­er­ty tax to be col­lect­ed in 2024 is ex­pect­ed to be “in the vicin­i­ty of $400 mil­lion”. This was to be pumped in­to Gov­ern­ment's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form plan.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials didn't re­ply yes­ter­day on what will ap­ply to per­sons who've al­ready paid prop­er­ty tax since col­lec­tion be­gan; and how changes in the up­com­ing Prop­er­ty Tax Amend­ment bill might af­fect pro­ject­ed prop­er­ty tax rev­enue.

How­ev­er, at to­day's House sit­ting, de­bate is ex­pect­ed on a mo­tion by Im­bert to raise Gov­ern­ment's bor­row­ing ceil­ing by $10 bil­lion.

Prop­er­ty Tax Amend­ment Bill Chp 76-04

The ex­plana­to­ry notes stat­ed that the bill seeks to amend the Prop­er­ty Tax Act in­clud­ing by:

*In­sert­ing af­ter Sec­tion 17 a new sec­tion 17A to al­low the Board to case a no­tice of as­sess­ment to be is­sued on or be­fore June 30 for the year 2024 on­ly.

* Re­peal­ing Sec­tion 52 and sub­sti­tut­ing same with the word­ing hfrom Sec­tion 31 from the Val­u­a­tion of Prop­er­ty Act to al­low the Min­is­ter by or­der to al­ter the times for do­ing cer­tain acts etc and:

*In Sec­tion 53A by delet­ing the world “af­fir­ma­tive” and sub­sti­tut­ing the word “neg­a­tive” as the the means by which the Min­is­ter may amend the sched­ules.

* In Sched­ule 1, in re­spect of the rate of tax payable (%ATV) on res­i­den­tial land, by delet­ing the word “3” and sub­sti­tut­ing the word “2”.