Whither the new Mandeville tax office?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

In a special report to Parliament in January 2024, the Auditor General stated that, as at August 2023, Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) had expended a total of $356,802,893 over the previous three years to lease a building at Granvale Manchester to relocate the Mandeville Tax Office.

At a meeting of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in May 2024, the TAJ, commissioner reported that the cost to retrofit the building was J$1.0 billion and that it would be ready for occupation by September 2025. September 2025 has come and gone and so has September 2026; no relocation.

To date, based on the figures in the Auditor General’s report, an additional $240 million or so has been spent on rent, bringing the total spent for rent on a yet-to-be-occupied building to around $600 million. Assuming the cost of renovation remains the same, it means that the greater part of $1.6 billion would have been expended over six years. The floor area of the building is 42,300 square feet. So, to date, approximately $38,000 per square feet may have been expended to rent and renovate an unoccupied building.

We still do not have a date for the relocation of the Mandeville Tax Office and 25 per cent of the lease time has already expired. Whenever it is finally occupied, taxpayers will pay an estimated $1.54 billion in rent for the remaining 18 years of the lease.

By way of comparison, the New Police Divisional Headquarters in Westmoreland is budgeted to cost $2.7 billion and covers 64,000 square feet. That works out to $42,000 per square foot.

It is scheduled to be completed in December this year and it will be owned in perpetuity by the Government of Jamaica.

The sordid tale of the relocation of the Mandeville Tax Office will be a study in waste and maladministration for future generations of public administrators.

Alwyn Gregory