By SEAN DOUGLAS Thursday, October 29 2009

ST Augustine MP Vasant Bharath said people will soon face price-hikes in everything from buying a loaf of bread to visiting the dentist due to businesses raising their prices to pay for increases in property tax.

He said the taxhikes were universally disliked.

Estimating the tax paid on a commercial property would rise from $10,000 to $65,000 at Lange Park where the Kiss Baking Company is housed, he warned, “Brace yourself for an increase in the price of bread”.

Likewise, he cited figures to show that residential property-tax rates would rise from current levels of several hundred dollars per year, to several thousand dollars per year.

“We say to you in the UNC, we are not going to pay that tax,” he stormed at the UNC’s Monday Night Forum at Aranjuez Community Centre.

He said people’s property tax would be increased by a factor of ten-times, 20-times and even as much as 1,000-times, if the Government effects its plans recently announced in the National Budget. He said the taxhike was immoral as it comes after the Government has squandered $300 billion over the past seven years.

He said money was misspent on projects such as the Scarborough Hospital, Tarouba Stadium and the Waterfront Project.

Bharath was outraged that even as the Government could not tell the final estimated cost and completion date of the Tarouba Stadium, they were coming to impose these tax-hikes. Bharath recalled that by December 2008 the deficit had suddenly risen to $7 billion. He said a further $7 billion deficit was being predicted for next year.