For sev­er­al weeks, there have been scores of prop­er­ty own­ers, or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, at rev­enue of­fices across the coun­try, queu­ing up to pay their prop­er­ty tax­es.

The throngs of peo­ple look­ing to pay the tax would have de­vel­oped in the last few weeks af­ter the pop­u­la­tion was made aware, via a no­tice post­ed by the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion on June 25, 2024, that the dead­line for pay­ment was Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

It is not un­rea­son­able to ex­pect that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert would have known since at least June 25 that the dead­line was Sep­tem­ber 30, as he would ei­ther have set it him­self or ap­proved the time­line based on ad­vice from the tech­nocrats at the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion.

It seems ob­vi­ous that if the Gov­ern­ment is col­lect­ing a tax that in­volves new val­u­a­tion of prop­er­ties, with new as­sess­ments and based on a new for­mu­la, the ad­min­is­tra­tion would have put ap­pro­pri­ate op­tions in place to make the pay­ment as easy as pos­si­ble.

Such pay­ment mea­sures, ide­al­ly, should of­fer all the pay­ment op­tions avail­able to per­sons con­duct­ing busi­ness in 2024.

While cash and cheques should not be pre­vent­ed, the Min­istry of Fi­nance had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure prop­er­ty own­ers could make pay­ments by deb­it or cred­it cards, through their banks, by us­ing the reg­is­tered e-mon­ey providers, by on­line di­rect trans­fer and at the nu­mer­ous pay­ment cen­tres around the coun­try. And since not all own­ers of prop­er­ty in T&T live here, arrange­ments should al­so have been made to fa­cil­i­tate over­seas pay­ments.

For Mr Im­bert to have told the Sen­ate on Tues­day that ad­di­tion­al pay­ment op­tions are “a very com­plex mat­ter, made even more com­pli­cat­ed by the re­cent... ‘be­hav­iour’ of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al,” is sur­pris­ing.

While the coun­try ap­pre­ci­ates Mr Im­bert’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion that the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer does not al­low the ap­pli­ca­tion of a ser­vice charge to rev­enue col­lect­ed on be­half of the State, the is­sues of the prop­er record­ing of prop­er­ty tax pay­ments as rev­enue for the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund should have been ironed out with the na­tion’s banks and pay­ment providers months ago.

It is a dis­grace that many prop­er­ty own­ers, some of whom are anx­ious to pay the tax, have had to line up for hours to do so. It is more dis­grace­ful that many tax­pay­ers have been re­quired to make these pay­ments in cash, open­ing them­selves up to the ever-present threat of be­ing ac­cost­ed by a gun-tot­ing crim­i­nal.

It is al­most be­yond be­lief that T&T should be in this sit­u­a­tion in 2024, when it has a Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, a state agency called TTIFC, whose man­date is now “the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of gov­ern­ment pay­ments,” and an­oth­er state agency (iGovTT) whose sole mis­sion is to pro­vide “in­no­v­a­tive and im­pact­ful ICT so­lu­tions to en­hance the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of gov­ern­ment ser­vices.”

It is a mon­u­men­tal stain on the abil­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment to de­liv­er ser­vices to the pop­u­la­tion that the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion has been work­ing on a sys­tem al­low­ing for cash­less pay­ments for gov­ern­ment ser­vices, called Gov­PayTT, for at least three years now, but that sys­tem is not ready to ac­com­mo­date prop­er­ty tax pay­ments.

It is sim­ply in­tol­er­a­ble that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment was un­able to roll out an on­line pay­ment op­tion by the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line and al­so did not in­di­cate if that dead­line would be ex­tend­ed as a re­sult.

Mr Im­bert needs to apol­o­gise for his dis­mal han­dling of this is­sue, which cer­tain­ly re­quired prop­er plan­ning and ef­fi­cient im­ple­men­ta­tion.