(Trinidad Express) Recently-appointed Finance Minister Larry Howai says a more efficient and equitable property tax has to be reintroduced in the country.
“We have to bring back that property tax. It is costing the Treasury money (in lost revenue) that could be used to develop the country. I do need for us to revisit that property tax and consider introducing something more efficient, effective and more equitable than proposed previously,” Howai told the Sunday Express last Wednesday, during an interview at his eighth floor office in the Eric Williams Financial Complex, Port of Spain.
The previous stance taken by the People’s Partnership Government during the lead-up to the 2010 general election was to campaign on an “Axe the Tax” platform.
That manifesto promised to repeal the Property Tax Act of 2009, legislative reform that would have essentially provided new paradigms upon which property would have been taxed.
The legislation was passed in December 2009 under the former People’s National Movement (PNM) government.
The People’s Partnership Government has not sought to enforce the current legislation and has instead indicated it plans to bring legislation repealing the Act, passed in December 2009, and to re-establish the property tax at the old pre-2009 rates.
Property tax has not been collected since January 2010.
Official figures show property taxes collected in 2007 amounted to TT$82 million.
“Property taxes exist virtually all over the world because if you own a property, there is a cost attached to it at the micro and macro level: garbage, sewage disposal and everything that goes with maintenance.
“Trinidad and Tobago has had land and building taxes for more than a hundred years; it’s always been there, and nobody was ‘axing the tax’ prior to 2010. I think part of the problem was how the whole issue was communicated.
“By and large, most people expect they have to pay some kind of land and building taxes, but what they felt was the last legislation probably may have been a little bit heavy-handed, and so they rebelled against it,” he said.
Howai is clear that his duty is to get Trinidad and Tobago’s economy growing again, even if that means he’ll have to take some tough decisions.
