(Trinidad Express) Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira has taken ’offence’ to the description of the Property Tax bill as a revenue-raising measure.
Challenging the assertions of Diego Martin MP West Dr Keith Rowley and members of the Opposition, Nunez-Tesheira said it was a tax rate reduction measure.
The bills, entitled ’an Act to make Provision for the Assessment, Rating and Taxation of Land’ and ’an Act to amend the Valuation bill’, were passed at 8.50 on Monday night by a vote of 22 for/10 against. The Opposition UNC voted against it … Rowley was not present when the vote was taken.
Winding up the debate on the property tax in the House of Representatives, Nunez-Tesheira insisted that Government was dropping the rate of property tax across the country with the exception of the borough of Point Fortin.
’The issue is not the tax. We are bringing down the tax. The issue is that the valuations of properties have not been done (in accordance with the current law),’ she said.
She said Government expected to collect TT$250 million from property taxes in this fiscal year, TT$100 million more than what it would normally collect.
’So we are so busy scrambling for money that is why we are running to Parliament to get TT$100 million. … We would end up at TT$750 million (in revenue) in five years time as more and more properties come on the assessments roll,’ she said.
But Nunez-Tesheira stressed the average homeowner would pay TT$81 a month under the new regime. She said across the board Government was bringing property tax down to a rate of three per cent. Currently the tax is pegged at 7 1/2 per cent of the value of property. However, she stressed, the valuations have not been kept up to date.
Nunez-Tesheira accused the Opposition of ’fooling the national community’ and putting fear in the hearts of people about Government seizing their properties. ’But,’ she noted, ’this population knows that this is a caring Government’.
’This heartless Government spends TT$1.36 billion on senior citizen’s grants, TT$247.7 on disability grant, TT$1 billion on educational institutions,’ she satirised. ’The facts speak for themselves,’ she said, stressing that Government’s track record gave the lie to charges of heartlessness.
’They come here talking about ’axe the tax’. But they are a set of hypocrites,’ she thundered. She said one had to put a ’tablespoon of salt’ in whatever they say.
On the issue of local government reform, Nunez-Tesheira said property taxes as a general rule are used for local government. But she said the issues of local government are not issues of resources. She said every regional corporation at the end of the year had ’unused balances’. She said in most countries local government bodies raise 25 per cent of their financial resources while 75 per cent comes from central government.
