Property tax legislation now invalid

With an eye on brevity, this is the brief listing of the grounds: * Both Acts are dated for implementation beginning January 1, 2010, have lapsed and consequently lost their internal coherence, chronology and sequence of events by 2017, militating against legal and proper enforcement and in need of urgent judicial review.

* Previous property tax legislation has been prematurely repealed, establishing a legal vacuum or lacuna without any assessment rolls being compiled by the Commissioner of Valuation that is conditional for effective start-up.

* The May 22 deadline for owners of land to submit returns proclaimed by the Minister of Finance is a figment and fig leaf of his imagination without legal basis.

* Act No 18 is a violation of Sections 5 and 6 of the Constitution without being passed with the requisite constitutional majority.

* It is also an infringement of the constitutional rights to property ownership/possession and not to be deprived thereof, except by due process, as well as the right to privacy.

* Even if it complied with Sections 5 and 6 above, the Property Tax Act No 18 of December 31, 2009, is so draconian, oppressive, disruptive, unilateral and an unprecedented quantum and astronomical percentage deviation from the prevailing tax norm, and a denial of legitimate expectations, that it fails and would fail the test of proportionality in a democratic TT .

* The prevailing, adverse, regressive and plummeting socio-economic ecology will reinforce the applicability of the above-mentioned proportionality factor that can be upheld in and by a court of competent jurisdiction.

STEPHEN KANGAL Caroni