THE EDITOR: Last week at the post-cabinet news briefing when the new Prime Minister discussed the property tax, the focus of the majority, including the media houses and the various analysts, was on the fact that she contradicted the finance minister's statement that property tax payments would be refunded to those who had paid.
While this focus was understandable (after all, we ought not to casually dismiss a finance minister's policy statement), my attention was on another aspect of her discourse which went largely unnoticed, or at least unremarked.
The PM stated, inter alia, “We have always been against the property tax in this present form…” The last four words of this sentence are the ones which captured my attention. This is because “in this present form” would suggest to a reasonable person that the government is not against property tax per se, but is merely against the last government’s version of property tax.
The logical conclusion is that at some point after the repeal of the current version, this government may (or reserves the right to) implement a tax which it deems suitable on our property.
This of course would be a major disappointment to those who considered property tax to be onerous, and who would have reasonably expected, based on the current government’s strident utterances, that a repeal of the PNM’s version would mean not having to pay one red cent of taxes on their property in the future.
My interpretation, which is based solely on those four little words uttered by the PM, may be incorrect. On the other hand the fact that she chose to include them in her remarks means that it may not be.
Consequently, in order to clear up any ambiguity, I am kindly requesting that the PM (not the finance minister, for even at this early stage we would not be able to take him at his word) tell us in clear and unambiguous terms that no new version on taxes on the property of citizens would be introduced by her government after the current version they have always been against is repealed.
CLAUDE A JOB
via e-mail
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