And keeping it right in line with revenue generation, as you heard in the interview, the collection of property taxes and trade licenses is a major
part of revenue generation for a municipality. For the 2 past years, the Belize Chamber of Commerce has been trying to work with the Belize City
Council to bring down trade licenses fees and property taxes for businesses.
The task force has concluded that the city's current tax regime is too arbitrary - penalizing businesses owners who have large properties but who do
small volume business. On the other hand, they say it gives tax breaks to high volume businesses - such as law firms and accounting firms - which have
small property spaces.
After exploring different options, the proposal is to lower the property tax by as much as 50%. That would mean that the city's revenue would decrease
dramatically, right? Not necessarily, says Mayor Bradley, and he explained that it incentivizes more business owners to launch startups in Belize City.
And in the meantime, the Council is weaning itself off the dependence on hyper-taxation:
Mayor Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City
"The areas where we've gotten consensus about is that at the very least we should reduce the rate from the current 25% to 12.5%. So what that will
result in is that will cut your trade license bill in half. So we're still going to keep the current regime which is based on square footage, which
arguably has it's own challenges because you're talking about the arbitrariness of collecting square footage and where you are in the city - a downtown
versus Mahoganny street or in a no commercial area of Belize City. It still has challenges but one of the things that we think would be a huge impact
is that if we cut the rate - because I've maintained this is just too high. You want to promote business development in Belize City you have to be
reasonable, you can't be overtaxing people - and 25% of your annual rent of value is unsustainable for city that's competing with Ladyville and
Hattieville which have no property taxes and no trade license, so that we need to get our act in order and I think one of the best outcomes is if we
just say at the very least, let's cut this thing in half."
Daniel Ortiz
"Sir but doesn't that affect negatively the municipality having immediately less revenue to collect?
"
Mayor Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City
"Not necessarily, you have too look at issues of boldness and vision. So what we're looking at in terms of our rationale is volume rather than taxing
the people who currently pay. One of the things we are eagerly trying to advance is the development of the northern highway. If you go along the
northern highway, you're going to see the amount of businesses going up there."
"One of the approaches here as opposed to just kill the few people who pay trade license, if you lower the rate and you encourage and enabling
environment in terms of promoting more businesses, particularly small business then you go to poll. And opposed to having 10 people pay 25% you can
have 1,000 people pay 12.5% and your volume overall will increase."
Daniel Ortiz
"But until you get that buy in, will there be an immediate short term cash flow issue?"
Mayor Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City
"We're planning on this. When we did the municipal bond we gave up our subvention and we gave up our head tax, that was 2 years ago and the city is
doing well. We haven't had significant issues. We're doing a little bit better. We still have problems, we're operating with less revenue but your city
in moving forward."
According to Bradley, there is also an addition to this proposal which sets a flat rate for micro- businesses operating in the City, so that it is not
burdensome to the owners.
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