Ryan Ba­choo

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says it is con­cerned with the tim­ing of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax on cit­i­zens and its fi­nan­cial im­pact.

In a me­dia re­lease on Fri­day morn­ing, the Cham­ber is­sued a state­ment say­ing while it "un­der­stands the need for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax", con­sumers have al­ready been hit by in­creas­es in costs "and to in­sti­tute an ad­di­tion­al cost on home­own­ers would make it dif­fi­cult for them to meet their ex­ist­ing com­mit­ments".

The Cham­ber says it un­der­stands that the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from the prop­er­ty tax is a ne­ces­si­ty to pay for ser­vices and op­er­a­tions of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and hopes that it is ex­e­cut­ed in an eq­ui­table man­ner based on the cri­te­ria laid out for charges to be ap­plied to prop­er­ties.

The state­ment went fur­ther in say­ing, "The T&T Cham­ber fur­ther hopes that it does not de­ter busi­ness own­ers from main­tain­ing their com­pa­nies’ plant and ma­chin­ery as well as up­dat­ing their in­fra­struc­ture to in­dus­try-re­lat­ed best prac­tices. We have in the past called for a re­vi­sion of the six per cent tax on in­dus­tri­al prop­er­ties to ap­ply strict­ly to phys­i­cal prop­er­ty and not in­stall cost of plant, ma­chin­ery, and equip­ment in­side or out­side."

In say­ing that they are will­ing to work with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to find a so­lu­tion, the Cham­ber has main­tained the view that in­tro­duc­ing a top-line tax on busi­ness­es’ rev­enues may be a dis­in­cen­tive for fur­ther in­vest­ment in a time when the em­pha­sis is to cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness growth and so have a rip­ple ef­fect of less tax­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for gov­ern­ment.