Association welcomes extra time for landlords to comply with new tax

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA) is wel­com­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue’s (BIR) lat­est an­nounce­ment that down­load­able Land­lord Busi­ness Reg­is­tra­tion Forms will be avail­able from March 1, 2026, as well as the ex­ten­sion of the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line to May 30, 2026.

The BIR con­firmed this week that ad­min­is­tra­tive prepa­ra­tions are well un­der­way to sup­port land­lords seek­ing to be­come com­pli­ant ahead of the roll-out of the land­lord busi­ness sur­charge, a new tax mea­sure in­tro­duced in the bud­get.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo met with BIR of­fi­cials this week as part of on­go­ing dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sur­charge.

Un­der the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get, all land­lords are re­quired to be reg­is­tered with the BIR. The orig­i­nal dead­line of March 31 has now been ex­tend­ed to May 30 to al­low prop­er­ty own­ers more time to pre­pare.

Tan­coo, in a re­lease, said the ad­di­tion­al time would help land­lords “get their house in or­der” and re­duce the like­li­hood of last-minute con­ges­tion.

AREA's pres­i­dent, Sal­ly Singh, in re­sponse yes­ter­day, said the ex­tend­ed time frame of­fers valu­able breath­ing room.

“We wel­come this ex­ten­sion, as it gives land­lords much-need­ed time to get or­gan­ised and helps avoid un­nec­es­sary pres­sure on both land­lords and the BIR," Singh said, al­so ac­knowl­edg­ing the BIR’s ef­forts to en­gage stake­hold­ers.

She fur­ther stressed that ac­ces­si­ble guid­ance would be par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant for small-scale and in­di­vid­ual land­lords who may be un­fa­mil­iar with the reg­is­tra­tion process.

"While we con­tin­ue to call for clear, fair, and trans­par­ent im­ple­men­ta­tion of new tax mea­sures, we strong­ly en­cour­age land­lords to use this ad­di­tion­al time to bring their af­fairs in­to com­pli­ance and to seek pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice where need­ed," she said, adding that AREA looks for­ward to con­tin­ued di­a­logue with the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the BIR to en­sure the new sys­tem meets na­tion­al rev­enue goals while main­tain­ing a sta­ble and sus­tain­able rental mar­ket.

For an in­di­vid­ual, the re­vised penal­ty for not fil­ing tax­es (land­lord busi­ness sur­charge) is $1,000 for every six months late. Cor­po­ra­tions (lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies) in­cur a high­er cost of $2,500 for every six months that lapse.