Valuator supports Property Tax

Namely, that funds collected under the Act should go to Local Government bodies and not into the Consolidated Fund and a review of the exemption given to places of worship and educational institutions under Section 16 of the Act.

“Under the old system, Land and Building taxes went to the regional corporations.

Now though, all funds would go into the Consolidated Fund, essentially the Treasury...I would like to see them change that. Even if they have to make a change a year from now, I would like to see that changed.

I believe the money should go to the Local Government bodies...

for the benefit of the people living in the area who pay the taxes.” Raymond shared his views on the matter while delivering the feature address yesterday at a luncheon hosted by the Rotary Club of Portof- Spain at its offices, Fitzblackman Drive, Woodbrook.

Regarding the religious and educational exemptions, Raymond said “when you look at how it is they do what they do, the extent to which they advertise in the press...it’s like a business.

No names have to be called but everyone sees it, it’s serious. So I’m not comfortable with the notion that (they) could be enjoying a zero percent (tax), which is what the Act says.” Raymond also encouraged property owners to complete and submit their valuation forms by the May 22 deadline if they wish to avoid possible future loan rejections involving the use of their property as collateral.

Responding to a question about persons who say they don’t intend to comply with the law because their political party has advised them not to, Raymond warned that “if you got into a situation (later on) where you had to approach a financial institution to borrow money on your property, once the property tax system is in place, they’d be asking you for your property tax receipt.” “Just like they want to see your WASA receipt and your deed to make sure you’re indeed the person who owns the property,” he added, “if they can’t see a property tax receipt, as far as I understand the financial system, and I have some understanding of it, they won’t process your application any further.” Raymond warned that “as a political supporter of a particular cause, you’d be making a sacrifice. So that is something people need to bear in mind but I can’t tell people what to do.” Several persons have argued that implementing Property Tax now would add to an already heavy economic burden for some. Raymond was asked about the possible economic fallout if implementation was further delayed.

“Property Tax is actually a window to allow us, for the first time, to have an appreciation of what properties exist in the country, what properties are rented in the country, what properties are registered for; what is their use, and for the first time, to have an opportunity to levy the correct taxation across the sector.” “So I don’t see it (implementation) as a set back and let us be clear, there have been seven years; from 2010 to 2016, in which no property tax was paid by property owners in this country. There was a seven-year tax holiday.

The minimum loss of revenue to our Treasury was TT $2.275 billion because the annual estimate of revenue for 2010 was $325 million.

So it’s a significant loss that we have to recover.” Raymond also said that “the major concern with Property Tax the last time, in my view, was that it would have given birth to a transparent system which would have allowed anybody to go onto a computer at any time and check to see who owned a particular property and how much rent they had declared.

“So if you were renting for $3,000 a month an apartment under my house, you could check and see, and if I had put down on the form that it was $1,500, you could correct that. You could anonymously report to the authorities, so the system is self-correcting, the information is crowd-sourced and because we’re all participating in it and we’re all looking over each other’s shoulders, the possibility of cheating is much less but that is exactly what certain people don’t want,” Raymond argued.