The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Natural Resources also discussed the often troubling issue of land taxes. In this fiscal year, government budgeted for $20 million in collection and actually collected only $4 million. Still next year, it hopes to double that to about $9 million. We found out how.
John Briceno, Minister of Natural Resources
"The way best is to move away from valuation to more to setting up an assessment and categories of different lands. We have come up with the categories of rural lands, which used to be what called agricultural lands, village lots, beach lands for the land owner to know under what category they are and also then to have further breakdown into the acreages that you have and the district that you live so that every year as a land owner all you need to do is to look at the schedule that we have for land tax and you can work it out yourself. Certainly what we need to do is move into what we call lands valuation. By lands valuation it means that you will be looking at the activity that takes place in a certain geographic area and based on that then you have computer models and then you would just enter your formulas and information and then that will determne what kind of taxes you are going to be paying in that particular region."
"What we are telling the land owners is that this is the law and we need to find a way where we can collect the taxes. Certainly in 2004/2005 I think the goal set for collection of land taxes was a bit too ambitious and we may not be able to meet those targets. Even this time around what we have done is reduced it somewhat but we are taking a more proactive approach to collection. We have engaged the services of a company run by Jose Cardona who was former Commissioner who knows the intricacies of dealing with land and tax matters. He is doing that but we have gone a step further. We have taken another step and our Ministries in offices across the country is producing now the statements for them and we are going out in the field meeting some of these lands owners and giving them their tax assessments and encouraging them to at least start pay."
The briefings will become a week fixture, and the next Cabinet meeting is on March 29th.
