THE EDITOR: With today being the deadline for registering one's property for tax, I cannot help but be bemused by this ridiculous attempt to raise additional funding for the Government. If there is any doubt that the advisers of the Government are bereft of ideas, this property tax endeavour should confirm one's suspicion.

It is clear to any sensible thinking person that five years have past since this government came into service without a cent coming in from property tax, as I predicted. Another five years will pass without a proper structure in place to assess and implement a proper property tax system. Why? one may ask. It just is not possible under this convoluted system.

Let's think this through. There are more than 500,000 properties in TT. But for argument's sake let's say there were 400,000. Each form submitted must be read by someone, evaluated for errors, perhaps have someone visit the site for confirmation and then finally arrive at a value for that property. If one public servant was to complete two forms a day that would be plenty.

If 100 public servants were to be dedicated to only working on processing property tax it would take them 2,000 workdays or seven and a half years to complete the processing exercise. No time is added for site visits, days when site visits are attempted, and no one is present, or travelling to far-off areas. In the meantime, not a cent would be collected and property tax would be the burden of another administration.

Why is it so difficult for the Government to take one's last property tax that was paid 'x' years ago and add to it a percentage 'y' that represents the percentage of economic growth? Thus, one's new property tax will be the old tax plus a percentage increase in tandem with economic growth? Perhaps that would be too easy, it would not allow for the employment of temporary assessors and wastage of taxpayers' money.

The citizens ought not to be concerned about new property taxes soon. Under the proposed system such a tax cannot happen for years. Citizens should however be concerned about registering their properties as the fines that can emanate from non-registration could make proposed property tax revenue look like pocket change.

STEVE ALVAREZ

via e-mail

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