There’s no deadline for homeowners to the submit Valuation Return Forms at Valuation Division offices nationwide even though the implementation of the property tax law remains tied up in court.
Residential property owners can continue submitting forms after yesterday and there will be no sanctions, Minister in Finance, Allyson West said yesterday.
West gave the clarification, responding to concerns by members of the public after the Ministry had last month stipulated a July 14 “deadline” for submission of forms.
The High Court ruled in June that submission of Valuation Return Forms is voluntary and that the Finance Ministry must advertise information on this, the Ministry extended the initial deadline to July 14 for submission.
The original deadline was May 22 which was extended a week later following which the court action ensued by the Opposition halting the process and resulting in the judgment. The substantive case challenging the law has been listed to be heard in September.
The impending “deadline” this week, caused an increase in the number of people seeking to submit forms in the last three days although the numbers had been only a “trickle” in several regional offices in previous weeks.
Valuation Division officials said the increased numbers were nowhere near the “rush” which occurred for the first May deadline when offices were “swamped.”
Senior Valuation officials told T&T Guardian that since the court had ruled submission was voluntary, there couldn’t really be an official cut-off date like July 14. They said once the process was voluntary, people could continue submitting forms after July 14.
Contacted on the issue, West gave similar confirmation. She said, “It’s a voluntary process so people can certainly continue to submit forms after yesterday and there will be no penalties for submissions after yesterday’s date.”
On public concerns about the security of their personal information, West also said “The Valuation Division of the Finance Ministry and the Board of Inland Revenue have historically kept people’s information confidential. I don’t know of any instance where there has been leakage of someone’s confidential information. So all information from this exercise will also be kept secure.”
“We’re very much aware of public concerns on this aspect and we are careful with people’s information,” she said.
Port-of-Spain Valuation office reported a slightly larger number of submissions yesterday. East Trinidad and San Fernando offices reported “steady flow,” and “trickling” flow.
Valuation officers estimated the overall exercise would take a couple years to complete. They added assessors - who will be visiting properties whether or not forms are submitted - are currently training at the University of the West Indies and should be on the field from September.
On Thursday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert could not give the number of forms received so far when asked about this at the post-Cabinet media briefing. He said he didn’t have the figure at hand and promised to send the information, but none was forthcoming up to yesterday.
Yesterday former minister Devant Maharaj who had filed the court action challenging the property tax legislation, agreed with West that there could not have been a “deadline” of July 14 since the court had ruled that submission was voluntary.
“Being voluntary, there can be no ‘deadline’. To have set a ‘deadline’ of July 14’ was an apparent thumbing of the nose at the court’s order that the process was voluntary. Wasn’t that understood? It seemed it was another attempt to pressure the public into submitting their information.
Maharaj advised that homeowners who’d been seeking to get back their property tax forms - as some Valuation offices reported had occurred - and were unable to get them back, should contact him. “My legal team will be happy to deal with it,” he said.
“Government has to come clean on the number of forms which have been received including since the judgment and they should clarify that it’s an estimated $4 billion they stand to collect from this. If they’ve targetted 400,000 households with average payments of $1,000, it should be over $4b. On one hand the Prime Minister is signalling public sector job cuts and on the other his Finance Minister wants to tax people to pay property tax with money they may not have.”