Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion de­bat­ed the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge and the new land­lord busi­ness tax in the Fi­nance Bill, 2025, with both sides bat­tling over whether busi­ness­es or the gen­er­al pub­lic will ul­ti­mate­ly foot the new bills.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee said the “small man” will not be af­fect­ed, but Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les warned the costs will be passed to con­sumers.

Beck­les de­scribed the bill as a “pun­ish­ment plan,” not a rev­enue plan.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, in lay­ing the bill, ex­plained the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge will ap­ply on­ly to com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al users.

“Mr Speak­er, Clause 18 al­so in­serts a new path in the Mis­cel­la­neous Tax Act and in­tro­duces an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge. Un­der this path, a sur­charge of $0.05 per kilo­watt hour will be charged on elec­tri­cal en­er­gy con­sumed by com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers.”

He added that house­holds and key pub­lic ser­vices will not be af­fect­ed.

The sur­charge will not ap­ply to pub­lic schools, health­care fa­cil­i­ties, the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty for pub­lic pur­pos­es or oth­er ad­di­tion­al cat­e­gories as the Min­is­ter may by or­der pre­scribe.

MP David Lee re­in­forced that po­si­tion, telling the House that res­i­den­tial cus­tomers will not pay the sur­charge.

“Res­i­den­tial cus­tomers are ex­clud­ed from that sur­charge, Mr Speak­er.”

Lee ar­gued that the re­peal of prop­er­ty tax and the new land­lord busi­ness sur­charge are aimed at fair­ness in the rental mar­ket, not small home­own­ers.

“Mr Speak­er, by re­peal­ing the prop­er­ty tax regime, the gov­ern­ment, this gov­ern­ment, is send­ing an un­mis­tak­able sig­nal. The mod­est fam­i­ly home is not the state’s cash cow, Mr Speak­er, it is not the state’s cash cow,” he said.

He said the new mea­sure tar­gets com­mer­cial-scale rental op­er­a­tions and brings land­lords in­to the tax net through reg­is­tra­tion and a sur­charge on rental in­come.

“This Clause 18 does three im­por­tant things, Mr Speak­er. It recog­nis­es rent­ing as a busi­ness where it is done on a com­mer­cial scale. It re­quires land­lords in that busi­ness to reg­is­ter with tax au­thor­i­ties. It im­pos­es a mod­est sur­charge on gross rental in­come with a slight­ly high­er rate as the in­come grows.”

But Beck­les re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s as­sur­ances and said the cost will be passed di­rect­ly to the pub­lic.

“The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni Cen­tral will have us be­lieve that what is hap­pen­ing is that once you put these mea­sures in place that specif­i­cal­ly re­fer to rentals, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mer­cial rentals, that per­sons with res­i­dents would not be im­pact­ed at all by this bill,” she said.

She said once busi­ness­es are taxed, prices must rise.

“If it is, let us be very sim­ple. You have a com­mer­cial build­ing, whether it be a bar, whether it be a restau­rant, whether it be a gro­cery, any busi­ness en­ter­prise and you are now im­pact­ed by this bill. This Gov­ern­ment wants to tell the pub­lic that it is not go­ing to im­pact on your stan­dard of liv­ing.

“This tax that this Gov­ern­ment is im­ple­ment­ing must pass on to the pub­lic and no mat­ter how they try to do mes­sag­ing and a nar­ra­tive to make the pub­lic feel it is on­ly the com­mer­cial busi­ness­es, it’s on­ly the in­dus­tri­al busi­ness­es that will be im­pact­ed. We know that is ab­solute­ly false.”

Beck­les al­so chal­lenged the scope of the land­lord reg­is­tra­tion re­quire­ments.

“Un­der part 17, land­lord busi­ness dis­charge sec­tion 811 re­quires every land­lord to reg­is­ter with the board.”

She said the sur­charge is, in ef­fect, a tax on rent.

“Mr Speak­er, part 17 of the bill in­tro­duces a land­lord busi­ness sur­charge, a brand new tax scheme de­cep­tive­ly coached as a sur­charge.

“Mr Speak­er, it mat­ters not if they call it a sur­charge or what­ev­er they call it, it is a tax on rent.”

She ques­tioned how land­lords could ab­sorb the new costs with­out pass­ing them on.

“You have to file quar­ter­ly re­turns and hav­ing reg­is­tered that $2,000, paid that reg­is­tra­tion fee, you are re­quired then to pay a rental of 2.5 per cent for rental in­come un­der $20,000 per quar­ter and 3.5 per cent for rental in­come ex­ceed­ing $20,000.

“The ques­tion: How do they ex­pect land­lords not to pass on this to renters?”

Adding to the Op­po­si­tion cri­tique, MP for San Fer­nan­do East Bri­an Man­ning de­scribed the land­lord busi­ness sur­charge as “prop­er­ty tax by an­oth­er name.”

“The land­lord busi­ness sur­charge Mr Speak­er, aka the prop­er­ty tax by an­oth­er name. Mr Speak­er, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance giveth and he taketh away.

“Mr Speak­er, the min­is­ter re­moves the prop­er­ty tax in one breath and then re­in­stalls it in the oth­er,” Man­ning said.