GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Squat­ters, as well as peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of cer­tain types of land, even if they don’t own it, will have to fill out the Re­turn form which the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion has re­quest­ed.

This was con­firmed from re­li­able Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion sources yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the di­vi­sion’s re­cent ad­ver­tise­ment call­ing for the forms to be filled out. These are to be sent to val­u­a­tion­di­vi­sion.gov.tt. No­vem­ber 30.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion from sources, de­fault­ers who fail to sub­mit the re­turn to val­u­a­tion of­fices around the coun­try stand to suf­fer a $5,000 fine.

The mat­ter has caused con­fu­sion for many mem­bers of the pub­lic, who do not un­der­stand the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion’s ac­tion and the process.

Guardian Me­dia sought to get in­for­ma­tion from Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning but there were no replies.

Guardian Me­dia was re­ferred to the Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions and was told that a re­sponse was be­ing pre­pared and would be sent by 5 pm yes­ter­day. But that nev­er came.

How­ev­er, Val­u­a­tion sources con­firmed that peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of agri­cul­tur­al, com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial land, whether they own it or not, have to sub­mit the Re­turn form. Squat­ters on land will al­so have to fill out and sub­mit the form.

Sources al­so as­sured that mem­bers of the pub­lic do not have to have pri­vate val­u­a­tions done of the land they pos­sess, since the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion can val­ue the prop­er­ty. This is the di­vi­sion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, they added.

Al­ready, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has raised con­cerns about the call for sub­mis­sions, say­ing it was a re­turn of the Prop­er­ty Tax. They al­so ques­tioned why there was no call for peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of in­dus­tri­al land to sub­mit forms. But sources said own­ers of in­dus­tri­al land will not be left out and will come in the next phase of the sub­mis­sion dri­ve.

The in­dus­tri­al cat­e­go­ry con­tains the most com­plex prop­er­ties in the coun­try and al­so com­mands the high­est an­nu­al rental val­ues (ARVS) and these prop­er­ties would need spe­cial at­ten­tion to be ac­cu­rate­ly as­sessed.

The sources stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act, the Val­u­a­tion Roll, which con­tains in­for­ma­tion on all prop­er­ties, is to be shared with the Board of In­land Rev­enue and the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion is on­ly re­spon­si­ble for the cre­ation of the Val­u­a­tion Roll. They could not, there­fore, com­ment on the re­sump­tion of Prop­er­ty Tax, since that is out of the Val­u­a­tion’ Di­vi­sion’s hands and un­der the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

“That’s why our web­site stat­ed it’s (Re­turns) not re­gard­ing prop­er­ty tax — Val­u­a­tion doesn’t deal with that,” the source said.

Not the first call for re­turns

The amend­ed Val­u­a­tion of Land Act states that the Val­u­a­tion Roll can be de­clared com­plete and shared with the BIR once 50 per cent of the prop­er­ties with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been as­sessed.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that a “cer­tain amount of work” on that has been done so far and a full es­ti­ma­tion will be giv­en ahead.

Sources not­ed that the process of re­quir­ing re­turns from peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of land has been man­dat­ed un­der the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act since its procla­ma­tion in 2009 and this was a con­tin­u­a­tion of the func­tions the Dis­trict Rev­enue Of­fices ful­filled be­fore 2009.

They said the re­cent ad­ver­tise­ment isn’t the first call for sub­mis­sions, as it was al­so done in 2017. How­ev­er, that was un­der a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act (Sec­tion 6).

The prop­er­ty tax is­sue which arose at that time was chal­lenged legal­ly by then Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj. Sources said de­spite be­ing chal­lenged, prop­er­ties be­long­ing to own­ers who were will­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the as­sess­ment were be­ing sur­veyed and this process is on­go­ing to date.

They ex­plained that the cur­rent call for Re­turns is au­tho­rised by Sec­tion 29 of the Val­u­a­tion of Land Act, a dif­fer­ent sec­tion than that which was re­lied up­on in 2017.

Hav­ing lost his case in the first in­stance, Ma­haraj is set to con­tin­ue his ap­peal in No­vem­ber be­fore the Court of Ap­peal. He had chal­lenged the le­gal­i­ty of re­quir­ing home­own­ers to sub­mit Re­turns by the date stat­ed in Sec­tion 6 of the leg­is­la­tion.