Dear Editor,
I refer to your report on page 9 of August 22, captioned ‘City to go after tax defaulters after amnesty.’ A welcome gesture indeed, but I make two comments.
The first may seem trifling, but it refers to the term ‘taxes.’ There are indeed no taxes at present levied on landed properties in the city. There is only ‘general rate’ provided for at section 202 of the Municipal and District Councils Act. This is quite inaccurately but colloquially referred to by the public as ‘rates & taxes.’
However, my main concern here is that these general rates be never described by the Georgetown City Council or its officers as ‘property taxes.’ This tends to cause much confusion. Property tax is leviable by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the Guyana Revenue Authority, on the total property of taxpayers (with certain free deductibles) and comes into consideration when the owner of landed property seeks to sell or transfer it to another, requiring the obtainment of a Certificate of Tax Compliance from the GRA. The confusion arises when the seller of that landed property in being asked by the GRA to provide a property tax return claims, quite wrongly, that he/she has already paid the property tax to the city council or other local authority.
What they would have paid is simply the general rate chargeable by the city or the related local democratic authority.
Let us employ the current terminology and, of course, pay up those general rates without fail.
Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe
