Gail Alexan­der

Squat­ters, oth­er il­le­gal land oc­cu­pants and peo­ple with “less than per­fect” prop­er­ty ti­tles will have to pay the up­com­ing prop­er­ty tax along with oth­er cit­i­zens, says Min­is­ter in Fi­nance Allyson West.

West con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of amend­ments to the Val­u­a­tion of Land law.

De­bate will fol­low on amend­ments to Prop­er­ty Tax law for the tax to be col­lect­ed.

On con­cerns about peo­ple who hold land cer­tifi­cates, but aren’t own­ers, West said, “Yes, the in­ten­tion is that any­body who falls un­der the de­f­i­n­i­tion of own­er, whether le­gal own­er or oc­cu­pi­er, will have a tax li­a­bil­i­ty.”

“It doesn’t mat­ter that you’re not the le­gal own­er of the land or (you are) a squat­ter, as some­one oc­cu­py­ing prop­er­ty, you’re al­so en­joy­ing the ben­e­fits of ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions of the State.

“Why should you, be­cause you’re il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­py­ing land or be­cause you’re oc­cu­py­ing land un­der a less than per­fect ti­tle, why should you not con­tribute to pay­ment for those ser­vices? That’s Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion. We’re in­tend­ing to as­sess prop­er­ties like that to tax and to col­lect tax­es from peo­ple in that area. I’ll deal with that when I come to the Prop­er­ty Tax Leg­is­la­tion.”

In an up­com­ing de­bate on the Prop­er­ty Tax, West said she’d al­so de­tail how the sys­tem will work for squat­ters who have cer­tifi­cates of com­fort and those who don’t.

West as­sured up­com­ing land val­u­a­tions won’t be bad and the prop­er­ty tax— based on an­nu­al rental val­ue—won’t be high, I feel the an­nu­al rentable val­ues won’t be un­rea­son­able.”

She said con­cerns that el­der­ly peo­ple wouldn’t be able to af­ford the tax were un­found­ed, al­so since the leg­is­la­tion pro­vides re­lief for those un­able to pay. West said her re­cent quote on in­crease of fines for non-sub­mis­sion of val­u­a­tion forms—that “$500 was noth­ing”—was meant in the con­text that peo­ple of­ten pay high prices for Car­ni­val fetes and cos­tumes.

“I’m not say­ing ($500) isn’t a lot, but it’s not enough of a de­ter­rent on non-sub­mis­sion,” she added.

West said Gov­ern­ment had heard oth­er sen­a­tors’ con­cerns on the min­is­ter’s pow­er to ap­point a tri­bunal—to hear ob­jec­tions to val­u­a­tions and the tax—and amend­ments were be­ing pro­posed on this.