CPC, May Pen-February 12, 2015
Deputy Mayor, Councillor Uphel Purcell is recommending that land tax laws be amended to recognise home ownership as a criterion for inclusion on the tax roll. He says that a house or building tax should be instituted where once persons build they are liable to pay land taxes whether or not they legally own the land on which they build.
Councillor Purcell says currently a large number of home-owners are not being captured on the parish’s tax roll because they occupy lands informally.
The Deputy Mayor says most of these individuals are willing and able to pay their property taxes, but are unable to do so because the system does not currently accommodate them. He called on the local authorities to lobby law-makers to have the laws changed so that the Parish Councils can begin recouping the large sums of potential property tax monies tied to lands in informal settlements.
Mr. Purcell says compliant taxpayers cannot continue to be pressured when additional revenue needs to be generated. He says the house/building tax measure would represent a significant change from the old ways of raising revenue, which has not yielded much success to date.
The Deputy Mayor made the comments in response to the announcement of the Parish Council’s planned property tax collection drive which is slated to begin parish-wide on Monday, February 16.