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Monday, March 3, 2025

Imbert to lay bill for property tax law changes

Hope for some ease

by

353 days ago
20240315
Finance Minister Colm Imbert responds to questions during the Parliament sitting on March 6.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert responds to questions during the Parliament sitting on March 6.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

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”.


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