Afra: Opposition split on property tax

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s recent vow at a United National Congress (UNC) Monday Night Forum at San Juan that a future UNC government would abolish the property tax, is being queried by surveyor Afra Raymond, who is suggesting member parties of the People’s Partnership (PP) have different views on the property tax with no apparent consensus.

Raymond referred Newsday to a statement on his blog, which said Persad-Bissessar has called for valuation forms to be torn up, in contrast to Caroni Central MP and former PP planning minister Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, who has no objection once the tax was administered in a “fair, lawful and transparent ” way, a similar stance to Congress of the People leader Dr Anirudh Mahabir, who accepts a tax that is “fair, transparent and transparent.”

Raymond also said the former PP government had a chequered track record on such tax. He saw their Axe-the-Tax campaign in their successful 2010 general election campaign, as the PPs “single point of unity,” yet then saw just lukewarm attempts to implement an amended property tax (resulting in waivers during the PP’s tenure) even as they then did nothing to amend or repeal the actual Property Tax Act.

“All of this seems to indicate a lack of clarity and resolve within that group which formed the PP,” Raymond said. “It is difficult, given that background, to take seriously the recent promises by Persad-Bissessar to repeal this law. What has changed now? What is the new information which would justify a repeal now?”

Asked whether successive governments owe a continuity of the policy of their predecessors, Raymond said, “Of course those rights are part of the spoils of an electoral victory, but the related question is potent. To what extent can electoral arithmetic be allowed to outweigh the national development questions?” Overall, he was comforted by the fact of there being little real ideological difference between the main parties.

Raymond said the latest reliable estimate of property tax at stake was $503 million annually (as calculated for 2017). Persad-Bissessar had cited columnist Michael Harris’ objection to the annual rental value (ARV) method of charging property tax as “impossible to administer in an equitable and transparent manner” and which “opens the way for corruption and political victimisation,” but Harris favoured the area-based assessment for its “simplicity and transparency.”