Property tax confusion

IMAGINE you’re the owner of a wooden house with a patina of moss. It stands on crumbling foundations; galvanised sheets cover openings where wood planks have rotted through.

Yet you open a property-tax valuation notice assessing the annual rental value of your barely-standing assembly of wood rot and tetanus fastened together solely by termites holding hands in prayer under the floorboards at $96,264 a year.

From the studios that brought you chaos with Venezuelan migrant registration, utter pandemonium during the pandemic of the online vaccination registration and other feats of incomparable incompetence – here comes the “proppity” tax omnishambles.

Stories like the above are coming out of the woodwork: impossible valuations following no discernible method of calculation.

The rental value of a property seems to be very much in the eye of the beholder, but many homeowners are claiming their properties haven’t been beheld. With neither sight nor sound of the mythical field assessors, citizens getting valuations are wondering how the figures were arrived at. Many argue they bear no reference to information in their submitted forms.

What do the authorities see that homeowners do not?

“The annual rental value is determined by the Board of Inland Revenue and is the annual rent which a property is likely to attract having regard to the purpose for which the land is actually used, occupied or tenanted, or where it is not used, occupied or tenanted, having regard to the purpose for which it is reasonably suitable.”

We haven’t been given an explanation of the criteria used to determine what rent a property is “likely” to attract. Moreover, who or what AI model weighs the purpose for which a property is reasonably suitable?

The Government brays that property-tax objectors are either agents of the duplicitous opposition or denizens of the upper crust lounging in million-dollar homes, being fed foie gras and fanned by eunuchs.

Getting that valuation in your private home is the most apolitical of events. You feel it in your private pants regardless of your political jersey.

Still, the PM accused the opposition of “pandering to every nonsense.” But a knee-jerk reduction of three per cent to two per cent in the property-tax bill isn’t pandering? Apropos of opposition pot-clanging, the PP could have repealed the tax when it rode the “axe the tax” wave into office in 2010 – it didn’t.

At any rate, these pot-and-kettle conversations offer no further illumination over an unwieldy system.

Most reasonable people understand that the property tax must be paid. It isn’t without precedent; land and building taxes were last paid in 2009.

Property taxes apply in the US where many Trinis have relatives and friends. My sister and her husband, who live in Texas, pay property tax. It’s calculated on the appraised value (which is considerably lower than the market value – what a property could be listed for). The method of calculation is as convoluted as ours.

In the state of Georgia, where my friend Pompadour lives, his tax is based on a similar system. Interestingly, my friend also says they don’t see field assessors.

However, here at home where the valuation is based on the perceived rentable value, how does the Government know it isn’t affixing an estimate, in some instances, to a burned-out piper shelter?

You see, forms and documentation detailing property specs that were submitted on the first go-round with this tax scheme were said to have been scrapped. How many people resubmitted?

In both instances of the US examples I’ve shared, the collection of those taxes funds area schools, infrastructural maintenance, garbage collection, etc.

There’s also full transparency, with websites detailing valuation breakdowns and how the tax is applied across your district.

Apart from the confused application of the property tax locally, there’s scepticism over where the money will go.

We’ve been told revenue raised by the scheme will finance regional corporations for the provision of services in our communities.

Traditionally, these local government bodies have functioned, for the most part, like community employment agencies; rudderless make-work schemes with little meaningful output at the community level.

We all want clean, orderly communities with beautiful play parks and sidewalks that people don’t fall through.

Maintained roads and an end to primitive box drains in 2024 – paying property tax would be worth it if we could be guaranteed these amenities.

History and the present say we cannot.

If the Government wants the public on board with the property tax, then more transparency and less browbeating and badjohn talk would be the best place to start.