Tancoo: Landlord tax is not property tax

News Melissa Doughty Yesterday

Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo. - Photo by Faith Ayoung

FINANCE Minister Davendranath Tancoo insists the landlord tax which is part of a suite of measures passed in the Finance Bill, 2025 last week in the House of Representatives, is not an updated version of the PNM's much maligned property tax.

He said so during an interview with Newsday on December 7.

He said the PNM had managed to convince a lot of people that the landlord tax and property tax were one and the same. He said the property tax was based on residential income which did not exist.

“It was based on people’s private homes as if it was generating an income. So it was based on an assumed income, which did not exist. Home owners were being asked to pay a tax on income that they were not generating.

“That, in itself, was manifestly unethical and unfair.”

He added that the current tax targets landlords who are generating revenue, who are unregistered and who are not paying tax.

“For many years, landlords charged people and that money goes in their account. But this is really a commercial activity...it is a revenue stream. We are not taxing fake income, we are taxing real income which should have been taxed in the first place,” he said.

Tancoo said this system which targets commercial revenue is much more equitable, just and legal than the PNM's property tax which assessed and then taxed private homeowners on the potential rental value of their homes and private properties.

The former administration, Tancoo said, had claimed there are over 100,000 landlords in Trinidad and Tobago, and it it these who the Landlord Tax will be apply to.

Some ministers, he added, are “substantial landowners” and receiving rent from the government but were not being asked to pay a fair share to the government’s coffers.

He said the current administration, while in Opposition, lobbied against the tax for private residences. He said the landlord tax does not target homeowners who are not generating revenue from their home.

“This is completely different and I think it is unfair and unethical for the PNM to keep promoting something that it is not, but then again, that is typical of the PNM,” he said.