Muddled property-tax messages

With the deadline for paying property tax coming in six weeks, on September 30, there remain far too many issues around the resumption of the tax given how long the Government has had to plan for this.

It cannot possibly be unaware, that the biggest problem that's faced the implementation of the revised property-tax regime has been a lack of clarity about every step of the process.

Even reducing the tax on residences, from three to two per cent, hasn't mollified some public objections to the tax.

The State has faced a running communications problem about the annual residential tax assessments since the resumption of property tax was announced 2009.

Despite that, the Ministry of Finance has declined to do even the simplest thing, to create an online app that would allow a homeowner to enter the value of their home and get an approximate tax total to consider.

Rental value can be a sophisticated calculation, and some mathematical models can guide the creation of a technology-driven solution capable of previewing a homeowner's property tax rate.

Most homeowners should have been able to receive an approximation of their potential property tax years ago, settling their concerns.

That opportunity has been lost and now it seems that the Government is preparing to receive payments from tens of thousands of homeowners, with no secure, convenient way for them to make payments. They are apparently, expected to queue up outside Inland Revenue offices.

Government's TTConnect portal remains in disarray with e-Tax services users facing their own challenges. There is no equivalent online facility for property-tax payment.

It shouldn't require a pandemic to push greater efficiencies in government systems, but the Government managed to do so, in 2020 and 2021.

Now it seems that even the collection of the millions of dollars it hopes to gather from the property-tax exercise can't seem to motivate the Finance Ministry to collaborate with the Digital Transformation Ministry on a more efficient way to collect this revenue.

Digital recalcitrance or worse, an unwillingness to commit to truly open governance principles, seems to have also led to a refusal to create an openly accessible online register of homeowners and their taxable liability, although this information is already available through registered deeds.

It’s already possible to check a driver's details at the Works Ministry's website with a permit number and date of birth.

This decision effectively blocks any potential for independent or crowdsourced analysis of the evaluation process for property-tax assessments.

By 2024, the Government should be committing more tangibly to its continued claims of implementing transparency in governance, and open government, by making public information meaningfully accessible to an increasingly digital electorate.