When it comes to Real Property Tax arrears they always try to pin the blame on foreigners. And without a doubt there will be some foreigners who are in arrears, it is statistics. But I am certain that a very large proportion are Bahamian property owners, especially commercial property owners. These will be many of the same persons who have traditionally been allowed to incur very, very large outstanding bills owing to BPL and Water&Sewerage. Much easier to pin the blame on “the others” than ones own.

The other big issue is that since the online RPT portal that was implemented in 2015 went down and finally disappeared in 2020 the existing dysfunctional and convoluted system for getting RPT bills, paying for them and getting the Tax Certificate has not made for an efficient or user-friendly ability to pay. This is a perfect example of the DIR and government being the authors of their own problem.

Bahamians should be exempt of any sort of tax on short-term vacation rentals for at least 5 full years, maybe even 7 or 10 years, upon any implementation of said tax. As for the hotels, they get huge concessions from government so no, I do not concern myself with their noise and neither should you.

Exactly. It’s the biggest scam perpetrated on the Bahamian people.

Duh!! Ya think!! Of course this will lead fewer cruise ship passengers to downtown!! That is the whole point!!! The cruise lines don’t want their passengers going into the city or anywhere else except to their own exclusive “resort”. The downtown businesses should have been fighting this deal from day one years ago!!! Now they are way too late.

“……he(Halkitis) explained that the move was intended to ensure that those offering vacation rental products met a standard that upheld The Bahamas’ reputation as a quality tourism destination and experience.” Another government spokesperson, I believe the head of DIR, last week used the same rationale. Which is all baloney since the short-term vacation rental model has been self-policing, self-regulating and growing by leaps and bounds very successfully for the past 20 years with absolutely zero input or regulation by any government department

10 more years and all of NP will be completely paved over and high-density population.

This is a joke. The Canadians are sending 2 very slow ( 8 knots cruising speed) Kingston class patrol boats. Armed with a couple of .50 calibre machine guns And a crew of 47 max. Laughable.

Here we go again, the old “the foreign property owners are the biggest delinquents when it comes to paying real property taxes” trope. I’d like to see Mr. Andrew Allen’s verifiable proof that is the actual case. In my experience the biggest delinquents in many, but not all, cases are Bahamian owned properties on New Providence, especially commercial propertys, but homes also. Granted there are many foreign homeowners who are delinquent on their taxes, some intentionally for sure, and others are behind due to the semi-broken and convoluted system in place to access ones tax-bill and pay it. Every year I have numerous foreign property owners, most seeking information and help trying to access and use the government system to pay their taxes. In my experience the huge majority of foreign property-owners not only want to pay their taxes on time, they actually want to do it early…but cannot due to the governments broken system.

Where in South Abaco is this going to be located??

So how is a new client going to open a new personal account?? Online?