Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranth Tan­coo is warn­ing that no less than 100,000 home­own­ers are fac­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings for fail­ing to pay prop­er­ty tax by June. How­ev­er, this is be­ing dis­put­ed by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning.

Tan­coo haz­ard­ed a guess at the fig­ure as he spoke at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) par­ty head­quar­ters where the week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence was held yes­ter­day.

He re­mind­ed that it is a crim­i­nal of­fence not to pay the tax, which is pun­ish­able by sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion and a $5,000 fine.

Last year, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert re­vealed that Trinidad and To­ba­go has around 400,000 res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, 232,000 of which were placed on the val­u­a­tion roll by May 2023.

But with just 801 peo­ple pay­ing the tax so far to the tune of $1,030,864.55, Tan­coo said thou­sands more could face the brunt of the law. He lament­ed this even as the Val­u­a­tion Tri­bunal has not yet been ap­point­ed to re­ceive ob­jec­tions from those dis­sat­is­fied with the An­nu­al Rental Val­ue (ARV) placed on their homes.

“Those per­sons are like­ly to be sub­ject­ed be­cause right now the law gives the min­is­ter the ap­proval and pro­vi­sion to legal­ly pros­e­cute those per­sons for fail­ure to com­ply and I be­lieve, giv­en this min­is­ter’s clan­des­tine char­ac­ter­is­tics, that he will so do,” he al­leged.

Tan­coo al­so urged Im­bert to dis­close who was re­spon­si­ble for plac­ing no­tices at Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) of­fices ad­vis­ing the pub­lic about the sus­pen­sion of pay­ments for prop­er­ty tax on March 14, af­ter he de­nied giv­ing the in­struc­tion to do so.

“In­stead of hold­ing some­one to ac­count for the chaos and mad­ness and may­hem that oc­curred as a re­sult, his pref­er­ence, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s pref­er­ence, was to cast as­per­sion and blame against all the pub­lic ser­vants in the Min­istry of Fi­nance. In one fell swoop, throw them all un­der a PNM PTSC bus. That is de­spi­ca­ble be­cause we do not be­lieve him,” Tan­coo added.

“If he can­not say it pub­licly, then he should not be say­ing it at all and I chal­lenge him to stop hid­ing be­hind X, stop hid­ing be­hind the use of Twit­ter. Get in­volved now, pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion now. If your name man, come pub­lic.”

Asked to iden­ti­fy the se­nior of­fi­cial who au­tho­rised the pub­li­ca­tion of the no­tice, Man­ning said, “I have no fur­ther com­ment at this time.”

How­ev­er, he re­fut­ed con­cerns about penal­ties for fail­ing to pay prop­er­ty tax, call­ing Tan­coo con­fused.

“The mat­ter is head­ing to Par­lia­ment to­mor­row (to­day) for de­bate and the amend­ments to be made are quite clear. The prop­er­ty tax rate is to be re­duced and more time is be­ing giv­en for val­u­a­tion no­tices to be sent out to prop­er­ty own­ers; there­by giv­ing the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion more time to re­view val­u­a­tions un­der query, ad­just where nec­es­sary and sub­se­quent­ly ad­vise the Board of In­land Rev­enue; and al­low the min­is­ter, by Or­der, to ex­tend ap­plic­a­ble time pe­ri­ods un­der the Act there­by grant­i­ng the Gov­ern­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty to ex­tend time lim­its such as the date up­on which prop­er­ty tax is to be paid and the date up­on which penal­ties are in­curred.

“As has be­come the norm, Mr Tan­coo’s com­ments are in­con­gru­ent with the facts,” Man­ning said.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.

The Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill, 2024 will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment at 1.30 pm. On Fri­day, Min­is­ter Im­bert read a state­ment on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax and dis­closed that the tax would be re­duced from 3 per cent to 2 per cent of the ARV. He al­so not­ed that a six-month ex­ten­sion would be grant­ed to fa­cil­i­tate queries.

Nakhid de­fends Har­ford

Mean­while, UNC Sen­a­tor David Nakhid crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young for what he de­scribed as their ver­bal at­tacks against for­mer chair­man of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd Ronald Har­ford.

Har­ford was speak­ing at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s (TTCIC) an­nu­al busi­ness meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency (Trinidad), Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day. He said the Gov­ern­ment should be held ac­count­able by tax­pay­ers adding that there was no plan for the oil and gas sec­tor. But both Young and Row­ley took um­brage at his state­ments.

Rush­ing to Har­ford’s de­fence yes­ter­day, Nakhid urged all mem­bers of the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to voice their con­cerns against Gov­ern­ment.