7 News Belize

Mayor Says Trade Licenses Reviewable/Apologizes For Publishing Bogus Tax Arrears Declarations
posted (September 18, 2013)
In December of last year, 7News told you about the sharp increase in trade license fees for Belize City where business-owners complained that they were not being fairly assessed.

Well last week, the Belize City Council published notices in the major newspapers in which they announced that assessment of business for the 2014 trade license fees is due to begin shortly. That sent out waves of concern from business owners, who are now dreading what their new assessment will be, and how much they will be required to pay.

They've voiced that concern to the Belize City Council, and today, while he had the opportunity; Mayor Darrell Bradley announced that he is open to having a discussion on how the trade license assessment should actually work. Here's how he explained it:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"Every year in the months of September and October we send out these notices to remind people that by December you have to pay your business trade license. I have also been in discussions with various groups including the mayors association to really discuss how the trade license regime can be changed."

"One of the difficulties that I recognized that the Chamber raises, is that rate in the trade license act is too high, its 25% and also the issue of how the tax is assess, is destructive of business. I have said this publicly I agree with that assessment because, for example you can look at a situation where somebody owns a warehouse, and they don't sell anything but because they have a big warehouse, their trade license is very high because it's based on square footage and rental value. Where as you can have a very small business like a law firm or like a real estate broker, and they pay a very small amount of trade license but they may do a huge volume of business."

"We recognized that, that is not a perfect fit, that's why we propose a change to adapt something like a categorization system, and we have developed a categorization that has 300 categories of businesses and what you could do, is you could agree on a flat rate or a ranged of rates and what we would suggest because what I hear from the business community is above the amount of the taxes that they are charged they want or they are concerned about it, they want it to be fixed. And a flat rate of course will fix the tax to a specific rate. But I have indicated to them, that that is something that the Chamber of Commerce needs to fight, and they need to lobby for."

"We are in trusted with the enforcement of the law, we didn't make the trade license law, we didn't set the rate, that is set by the Central Government and the Central Government needs to change it but of course they need proposals from the Chamber of Commerce as it relates to how to change it to adapt to a situation, that is beneficial to everybody and of course the City has to be a part of it because we need our revenue. In that discussion we will not lead it. The Chamber of Commerce needs to adapt their role as an advocacy group and they need to lead that discussion."

Bradley told us that he is open to discussing about how to fix the rates, and about a transparent and fair system of appeal the assessment.

And while we had the opportunity yesterday, we asked Bradley about a release from the People's United Party that City Hall is playing politics with the issue of announcing who owes outstanding arrears for property taxes. According to the PUP, the council has gone on a malicious smear campaign, so when we asked him to respond, he said that this was furthest from the truth:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"We have made it a clear policy not to be political in anything that we do. We are not political in our hiring. We are not political in our award of contracts. We are not political in our dealings with property tax and trade license arrears. I had a conversation with Mr. Espat's attorney. His attorney was Kareem Musa and one of the things that the City Council does is irrespective of political parties and irrespective of persons we as an enforcement mechanism published the names of persons who owe arrears in property taxes."

"One of the things that we are realizing is that, that listing contains errors. We have about 20,000 property tax records in our City and a lot of times people transfer yours property but they don't inform the City Council as it relates to when that transfer occurs and we have a difficulty in terms of engaging with the Lands Department in Belmopan to ensure that our records are accurate. We are putting in place systems to check those things but that will likely take us a year to complete - to do a title search and recording of all of these 20,000 property owners, that's part of our audit process and that's ongoing."

"I was informed by another individual that Mr. Kareem Musa represents and I had verified it with our tax people and it was correct what he was saying that the City Council made a mistake and what we are doing is publishing an apology to this person and I will write this person also to apologize for them from the mistake. The mistake is that our records are in error. The person once owns the property but they transferred the property a year ago and our records were never up to date and so it showed that the person had an arrear for the current year period and we published their name in the newspaper along with every other name that we published. It's not that we are signaling out anyone person - there is a random process which is a administrative process where we put out the names of every single person who shows an arrear. That's not something that comes to the Council, that's not something that comes to the desk of the Mayor and that's not something that we deal with in a very political way. No way that we deal with that."

As noted, Bradley says that anyone who has been wrongly placed in the public spotlight, they council is more than willing to apologize if they find that they are in error.

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