Dear Editor,
President Irfaan Ali’s announcement that his government will scrap the property tax on individuals is being trumpeted as “relief for all.” It is nothing of the sort. It is a precision engineered handout to the rich, dressed up in the language of compassion, rolled out in prime time as if the poor were finally getting a break. If the President was sincere about his “One Guyana” agenda, a reduction in VAT would have brought relief to all instead of filling pockets already overflowing. A clear signal of where his priorities are. The truth is brutal: the poor gets nothing because they were already paying nothing; the rich walk away with millions.
Property tax in Guyana is not a charge on every small house or every struggling family. It is a tax on net property – the total value of a person’s assets minus their debts at year end. The system is structured so that a large band of net property is taxed at 0%, up to ($40m) which means that the majority of low‑income and working‑class people, whose net wealth never crosses that threshold, already pay no property tax. Repealing the tax does not put one extra dollar into the hands of that majority. Their lives, their bills, their anxieties remain exactly where they were the day before the announcement.
So who wins? The winners are the ones who never needed relief in the first place. The owners of multiple properties in prime locations. The holders of vast investment portfolios. The business elites and contractors whose personal net property towers above the 0% band, and who have been paying tax on the fat slices of wealth above that line. These are the people who now see that annual charge vanish. For them, this is not a symbolic gesture. It is a cash‑windfall bonanza, now funnelling money that used to go to the public purse straight back into private vaults.
No one should pretend this is accidental. The structure of the change, and the way it hits, carries the fingerprints of those who know exactly where the money is. The rich did not march in the streets. They did not hold placards. They did not chant for justice. They simply did what the wealthy and connected always do: they whispered in the right ears, sat in the right rooms, shook the right hands and secured quiet decisions that dramatically reduced their contributions to the society from which they profit.
And what of the poor, who make up more than half of this country? They continue to bear the brunt of high food prices, crushing utility costs, overcrowded schools, long hospital waits and broken infrastructure. They continue to pay consumption taxes on every basic item. They continue to be told to “tighten their belts” and “wait for the benefits of growth.” Yet when it comes time for the state to hand out genuine, hard‑cash “relief,” the rich are at the front of the line, walking away with tax breaks on wealth that ordinary Guyanese will never see in their lifetimes.
The cruel irony is not only in the policy, but in the propaganda around it. To parade a tax cut for millionaires as if it were salvation for the hungry is to spit in the face of the people who are actually hurting. It assumes the public will not read, will not ask, will not question. It relies on confusion about who pays property tax in the first place. It weaponises ignorance and fatigue to push through a decision that deepens inequality while being sold as generosity.
If this government wanted to prove it stood with the poor and working class, it would attack the cost‑of‑living crisis head‑on: fair wages, cheaper food, VAT reduction, affordable transport, better healthcare and housing. Instead, it has chosen to lighten the burden on those with the most and don’t need it. Expanding largesse, while leaving untouched the daily hardships of those with the least. That is not “vision.” That is class war – and the side chosen is painfully clear.
This is why this repeal must be called what it is: a victory for the rich, a betrayal of the poor, and a politically packaged lie sold as relief for all.