SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Pen­sion­er Glo­ria Barnes (not her re­al name) moved in­to her St Joseph Street, Ari­ma, apart­ment six years ago and has al­ready seen her rent in­crease twice.

Barnes is now brac­ing for her third hike fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s an­nounce­ment in his 2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day that the Gov­ern­ment will im­pose tax­es on land­lords in light of an ex­plo­sion of un­reg­is­tered com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial rental prop­er­ties.

Pen­sion­ers and low-in­come ten­ants across T&T are now fac­ing the prospect of high­er rents as land­lords pass on the added costs.

Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, Tan­coo said a 2.5 per cent sur­charge will ap­ply to land­lords earn­ing up to $20,000 in an­nu­al rental in­come, while those earn­ing above that thresh­old will be taxed at 3.5 per cent.

All land­lords must reg­is­ter with the Board of In­land Rev­enue and pay a one-time reg­is­tra­tion fee of $2,500, which is ex­pect­ed to rake in a min­i­mum of $70 mil­lion in rev­enue.

The news was not wel­comed by Barnes, 72, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty for fear of be­ing evict­ed.

A wid­ow for 15 years, Barnes has been rent­ing and look­ing af­ter her 35-year-old daugh­ter, who suf­fers from health com­pli­ca­tions.

“I am brac­ing for a rent hike come next year. Ten­ants will not es­cape this,” she said, as tears welled up in her eyes.

“It will put a lot of pen­sion­ers like my­self in a fi­nan­cial bind. We are at the mer­cy of these land­lords. At my age, I can’t move every time my rent goes up.”

Barnes, a hy­per­ten­sive case, knows the $5,500 pen­sion and NIS she re­ceives month­ly will have to stretch even fur­ther.

She ap­plied for an HDC house more than two decades ago and is still await­ing a re­sponse. Barnes is one of close to 200,000 HDC ap­pli­cants await­ing pub­lic hous­ing.

When Barnes moved in­to her two-bed­room apart­ment in 2020, the rent was $2,800.

In 2021, dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic, her rent in­creased to $3,000. By 2023, she had to pay $3,300. She fears the rent might jump to $3,500.

Barnes’ dai­ly fight for sur­vival has been nev­er-end­ing. Search­es for a cheap­er apart­ment have come up emp­ty-hand­ed.

“The price is the same else­where. My hands are tied,” Barnes said, shak­ing her head in frus­tra­tion.

Gre­go­ry Roberts (not his re­al name), 52, of Bushe Street, Curepe, pays $1,500 for a one-bed­room apart­ment Roberts shares a com­mu­nal toi­let with oth­er ten­ants, which he’s not com­fort­able with. It was the cheap­est apart­ment Roberts found in 2023.

His land­lord has al­ready hint­ed at in­creas­ing his rent by $200, which Roberts said was be­yond his bud­get, as he works for min­i­mum wage.

To com­pound mat­ters, the in­crease in NIS con­tri­bu­tions will on­ly add to his grow­ing stress. “I might just have to squat. That is the on­ly op­tion I am see­ing right now,” Roberts said.

A prop­er­ty tax dis­guise

Fol­low­ing the bud­get, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told re­porters that if some­one rents their prop­er­ty, earns an in­come and fails to pay tax­es, they are break­ing the law.

“It’s a com­mer­cial en­ter­prise. You are mak­ing an in­come, and by law, you should be pay­ing tax­es. But for too long, these per­sons were al­lowed to get away with it. You know some of them don’t even live in Trinidad but they have five hous­es and they are rent­ing it out.”

The PM as­sured the Gov­ern­ment would en­force tax laws.

While fears have been ex­pressed that land­lords will pass on the tax to ten­ants by in­creas­ing their rents, the PM said ten­ants have the op­tion to move out.

Sev­er­al an­a­lysts pre­dict­ed in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure from this sur­charge on prop­er­ty.

The Op­po­si­tion has la­belled the land­lord sur­charge as a dis­guise for prop­er­ty tax.

A pe­rusal of more than 100 apart­ments, town­hous­es and sin­gle-unit hous­es along the East-West cor­ri­dor ad­ver­tised for rent in the dai­ly news­pa­pers on Tues­day, showed vary­ing prices.

Prop­er­ties were al­so avail­able for rent in Ch­agua­nas, San­gre Grande, Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, and La Brea.

Month­ly rentals and tax­es

* De­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion, the month­ly rent ad­ver­tised for an un­fur­nished one-bed­room apart­ment av­er­aged be­tween $1,500 and $3,500.

* An un­fur­nished two-bed­room apart­ment was priced be­tween $2,500 and $4,000.

* A fur­nished two-bed­room costs be­tween $4,000 and $5,500.

* The high­est rent was list­ed at $9,000 for a three-bed­room apart­ment in the up­scale area of Fedelis Heights, St Au­gus­tine.

* A land­lord who rents a prop­er­ty for $9,000 per month would col­lect $108,000 a year. A 3.5 per cent pay­ment of this an­nu­al rental in­come would amount to $3,780.

* Tak­ing the low­est month­ly rent of $1,500, a land­lord’s an­nu­al col­lec­tion from a ten­ant would be $18,000. A 2.5 per cent tax on this fig­ure was $450.

Land­lords on reg­is­tra­tion fees and tax­es

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed three land­lords about the reg­is­tra­tion fee and the up­com­ing sur­charge. Two said they would pay it, while the third said she was strug­gling to make ends meet rent­ing two one-bed­room apart­ments on Bal­go­b­in Street, Tacarigua, for $2,600 and $2,800 per month.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter don’t know how poor peo­ple catch­ing hell to op­er­ate their lit­tle busi­ness,” the 62-year-old land­lord com­plained. “This is my on­ly form of in­come.”

Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, she said she worked for three years with a jan­i­to­r­i­al firm, and her em­ploy­ers were not reg­is­tered and nev­er paid her NIS con­tri­bu­tions. Un­able to col­lect any NIS ben­e­fit, she sur­vives on her rent.

“I am not go­ing to reg­is­ter or pay the tax. Just now, my daugh­ter is com­ing to live with me, so I will give up this busi­ness,” she said.

A Di­a­mond Vale land­lord who has three apart­ments said his sur­charge would cost more than the prop­er­ty tax he paid this year.

He cal­cu­lat­ed his an­nu­al tax­es at $5,880. One two-bed­room apart­ment is rent­ed for $5,500.

“Def­i­nite­ly, this will im­pact my pock­et. I would have to pass it on to my ten­ants. But I do plan to reg­is­ter be­cause it’s now a re­quire­ment of the law.”

A Mara­bel­la land­la­dy, who rents two one-bed­room apart­ments for $1,700 and $1,900 a month, said she of­fers af­ford­able hous­ing for low-in­come ten­ants.“If I in­crease the rent, peo­ple would not be able to af­ford it. I would have to ab­sorb that cost, which would be dif­fi­cult.”

Pro­posed tiered reg­is­tra­tion fees for land­lords

Sal­ly Singh, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA), said that changes in the tax­a­tion pol­i­cy can have a down­stream ef­fect on rental pric­ing.

“Any im­me­di­ate im­pact will de­pend large­ly on the terms of ex­ist­ing leas­es. For fixed-term leas­es, rental rates gen­er­al­ly can­not be al­tered un­til the lease ex­pires and is re­newed, un­less the agree­ment ex­press­ly al­lows for tax-re­lat­ed ad­just­ments dur­ing the term.”

Up­on re­new­al, Singh said, land­lords may seek to ad­just their ten­ants’ rent to re­flect the in­creased cost.

She urged that this be done fair­ly with due re­gard for mar­ket re­al­i­ties and ten­ant af­ford­abil­i­ty.

In the af­ford­able rental mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly for units un­der $4,000 per month, Singh not­ed that ten­ants have lim­it­ed in­flu­ence, as de­mand re­mains high and hous­ing sup­ply tight.

“AREA recog­nis­es this chal­lenge and em­pha­sis­es the need for fair and re­spon­si­ble con­duct by land­lords and agents alike.”

Re­gard­ing the num­ber of land­lords and ten­ants this coun­try has, Singh said, no data­base ex­ists.

Singh ad­mit­ted that the re­al es­tate rental sec­tor col­lec­tive­ly rep­re­sents a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try in T&T.

It is dri­ven by a high de­mand for af­ford­able hous­ing in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

She said the as­so­ci­a­tion was ready to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al rental reg­istry to serve tax­a­tion re­form and a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

“AREA sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er ob­jec­tive of for­mal­is­ing prop­er­ty-re­lat­ed in­come and tax­a­tion, but rec­om­mends that im­ple­men­ta­tion be phased and con­sul­ta­tive, with tran­si­tion­al sup­port for small­er land­lords. These mea­sures, com­bined with pro­fes­sion­al li­cens­ing of re­al es­tate agents, will en­hance com­pli­ance, strength­en fair­ness, and main­tain con­fi­dence in the rental sec­tor,” Singh said.

Singh rec­om­mend­ed that the land­lord reg­is­tra­tion fee be struc­tured in tiers to re­flect dif­fer­ences in in­come and prop­er­ty hold­ings.

“Flat fees can de­ter par­tic­i­pa­tion from small land­lords and in­ad­ver­tent­ly cre­ate bar­ri­ers to com­pli­ance. A grad­u­at­ed mod­el, com­bined with in­cen­tives for ear­ly reg­is­tra­tion and com­pli­ance, would like­ly yield high­er par­tic­i­pa­tion and more re­li­able da­ta.”

She be­lieved that the procla­ma­tion of the Re­al Es­tate Act 2020 and the in­tro­duc­tion of li­cens­ing for re­al es­tate agents would bet­ter reg­u­late the in­dus­try and pro­mote bal­ance and trans­par­ent rental prac­tices.

No rent frame­work in place

Cur­rent­ly, there is no reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to en­sure af­ford­able hous­ing rentals in the coun­try. Land­lords can freely set the rental price for their prop­er­ties. This was not al­ways the case, as the Rent Re­stric­tion Act (Chap­ter 59:50) pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed for rent reg­u­la­tion.

Un­der Sec­tion 5 of the act, it al­lowed every land­lord and ten­ant to reg­is­ter with the Rent As­sess­ment Board (RAB).

How­ev­er, in 2002, the act, which set­tled rental dis­putes and dealt with land­lords and ten­ants’ re­la­tion­ships, lapsed. This put some ten­ants at the mer­cy of un­scrupu­lous land­lords.

Prakash Ra­mad­har, who served as le­gal af­fairs min­is­ter un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, said his min­istry be­gan to cat­e­gorise prop­er­ties for rent.

How­ev­er, when they demit­ted of­fice in 2015, every­thing was left in abeyance.

“When you have that kind of cat­e­gori­sa­tion, you’ll have a fair as­sess­ment as to what sort of rents a ten­ant should pay.”

In cer­tain ar­eas, he said, land­lords pro­vide poor-qual­i­ty hous­ing at high prices with no ba­sic ameni­ties.

Some land­lords ar­bi­trar­i­ly in­creased their ten­ants’ rents with­out im­prov­ing the prop­er­ty. These is­sues were raised in a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Ra­mad­har said he ex­pects some land­lords to evade pay­ing the tax, but warned that any­one will­ing to take such a risk could face le­gal con­se­quences.

“So they will have to be very care­ful in at­tempt­ing to hide the fact that they’re rent­ing prop­er­ty,” said Ra­mad­har, an at­tor­ney.

He said one way the Gov­ern­ment could iden­ti­fy land­lords is by ask­ing their ten­ants to reg­is­ter with a min­istry.