Guyana · Story

Guyana scrapped its wealth tax for people in the year its oil money exploded

Guyana taxed net property from the days of Cheddi Jagan and the 1962 Kaldor budget. In February 2026 the National Assembly freed individuals from it, back to the income year 2025. Companies still pay, and the economy grew 19.3% on oil in the same year.

Guyana is the country that switched off its wealth tax for people in the middle of an oil boom. The tax was born in the 1962 budget that Cheddi Jagan's government took from Cambridge economist Nicholas Kaldor.^[8]^[11] It survived the riots that greeted it and stood for more than six decades. In February 2026 it was removed for individuals back to the income year 2025, the year the economy grew 19.3%.^[4]^[12]

What the tax was

The Property Tax Act charged an annual tax on net property. Net property is everything a person owned on the last day of the year, at home or abroad, minus the debts owed that day.^[5] Houses, land, cars, jewellery, money and investments all counted.^[5]^[7] Individuals, resident or not, paid it, and so did companies.^[5]

The scale was gentle. The first GYD 40 million was free. The next GYD 20 million paid 0.5%, and everything above that paid 0.75%.^[5] A person with GYD 105 million in net property paid GYD 437,500: nothing on the first 40 million, GYD 100,000 on the next 20 million and GYD 337,500 on the last 45 million.^[5] Only people past the threshold had to file a return.^[5]

"Individuals" is a wider word than it sounds. For tax purposes it covers professionals, unincorporated businesses, partnerships and most contractors, as Christopher Ram points out.^[8]

Born in the Kaldor budget

In 1962 Western governments were reluctant to lend to Jagan, so he asked Britain for help with the budget and invited Kaldor to recommend ways to raise revenue.^[11] The budget that came out of it taxed higher incomes through a capital gains tax, an annual tax on property and a tax on gifts, and added a compulsory savings scheme and higher duties on goods such as alcohol and cars.^[11]

The opposition campaigned against it with the slogan "Axe the Tax". On Friday 16 February 1962 mobs attacked the power plant, the waterworks, Parliament and the premier's house. In all, 56 businesses were destroyed, 87 more damaged by fire and 66 looted. A police superintendent was killed and four looters were shot dead.^[11] The government lived through it, and the property tax stayed on the books.^[8]

How it was dropped

President Irfaan Ali announced in 2025 that the tax on individuals would go.^[8] The 2026 budget, read on 26 January by Finance Minister Ashni Singh, made it a proposal to "remove the net property tax on individuals". The reason given was to support savings and asset accumulation. The government said it would raise these people's disposable income by over GYD 1.4 billion.^[1]^[2]

The Fiscal Enactments (Amendment) Bill passed in the early hours of 14 February 2026, without the support of the opposition. Its changes to the Property Tax Act apply from the year of income starting 1 January 2025.^[3]^[4] That year was over before the bill was debated, so the repeal is retroactive. Ram & McRae, the chartered accountants and tax advisers who write the budget commentary in Stabroek News, called it a major policy reversal made worse by that.^[9]

The same commentary notes that no one had asked for it: "There was no evident public demand for abolishing a tax." The Minister, it says, did not give the cost of the revenue given up or say how it would be made up.^[9]

What it cost and what stayed

The first numbers are in. The Ministry of Finance's mid-year report shows net property tax collections down GYD 717.7 million in the first half of 2026.^[10] Over the same six months the Guyana Revenue Authority collected GYD 160.5 billion, so this tax was never a large share of the take.^[10] The report sets the drop beside the removal for individuals. Over the same months, corporation, withholding and income taxes from oil and gas were rising.^[10]

Companies still pay the tax on the same scale, with the return due on 30 April.^[5]^[6]^[7] So the tax was not found unworkable. A government that believed that would have dropped it for companies too. It kept the part that collects from firms and let go of the part that collects from owners.

Ram sees where this leads. Repeal removes the duty to list assets, so the state would see income and nothing else.^[8]^[9] Before the repeal the return reconciled what a person declared as income against the growth of their net worth, and it required a declaration of assets held in Guyana and abroad.^[9]

Oil changes the question

Guyana's economy grew by 19.3% in 2025. Oil output rose 21.1%, the rest of the economy 14.0%, and the country pumped 261.1 million barrels, passing 900,000 barrels a day.^[12] The Natural Resource Fund held about USD 3.3 billion at the end of 2025, over 12% of GDP.^[12]

In a boom like this, fortunes grow faster than wages, and the people closest to the contracts, the land and the construction work do best. Ram says the new wealth class includes ministers, their friends and their families, and that a tax-free "$2 billion plus" will go to that class under the repeal.^[8] He warns that the rest of the country will carry the cost through taxation, borrowing and drawdowns from the Natural Resource Fund.^[8]

Guyana had already shed most of its other taxes on wealth. Ram lists a top income tax rate that once reached 70%, dividends that are now tax-free, estate duty that is effectively gone and lighter taxes on capital gains. Property tax, in his words, is the last meaningful levy on accumulated wealth.^[8] Take it away and the country has an oil economy with no yearly tax on what the winners own.

Who backs it

The register holds one supporter in Guyana so far. Christopher Ram, managing partner of Ram & McRae and a member of the 2015 to 2016 Tax Reform Committee, defended the tax in the press and said it needs reform, not abolition.^[8] He is a wealthy person arguing for the tax he would be spared from: the repeal, he writes, would save him millions of dollars a year, and he never asked for it.^[8] The register has found no one else yet.

The objections, answered

"It is hard to collect"

Ram's answer is that weak enforcement is a reason to strengthen the tax office. VAT fraud, tax avoidance and customs losses are also large, and no one abolishes VAT.^[8] A tax that required every owner above a threshold to file a statement of assets is exactly what a revenue authority needs to see through a mismatch between lifestyle and declared income.^[9]

"It punishes saving"

Look at the scale. The first GYD 40 million is free and debts are fully deductible, so the tax never touched a family with a house and a modest savings account.^[5]^[8] Ram calls the threshold generous by international standards.^[8] Above it the rate is 0.5% or 0.75% a year. The government's own figure for the gain to taxpayers is over GYD 1.4 billion, and only people past the GYD 40 million threshold ever paid.^[2]^[5]

"It raised little"

A small cost is not a case for giving it up, because the repeal gives up the revenue and the information together. The Finance Minister did not say what the revenue was or how it would be replaced.^[9] Collections fell GYD 717.7 million in the first half of 2026 alone.^[10]

"Companies can pay, individuals should not"

Ram warns that owners of small family companies could escape any remaining tax by de-incorporating, as they did with the minimum tax.^[8] The companies' tax can be dodged by anyone who is willing to turn a firm into a sole proprietorship. A tax on the owners closes that door.

What a new Guyanese tax would need

Keep what worked: net property, debts deducted, the first GYD 40 million free, and 0.5% and 0.75% above it.^[5] Then fix what the 2026 repeal made plain.

Bring back the declaration. Every owner above the threshold files a statement of assets at home and abroad, so the revenue authority can match them with income.^[9]
Tax owners the same way whether or not they have a company. A company's tax should not be a reason to incorporate or de-incorporate.^[8]
Publish the numbers. Say each year what the tax raised and from how many filers, which the Finance Minister declined to do in 2026.^[9]
Tie it to the boom. A country whose economy grew 19.3% in a year and whose Natural Resource Fund holds about USD 3.3 billion can ask the biggest winners to pay 0.75% a year on what they own.^[5]^[12]

Luxembourg also freed its people and kept the tax for companies; see its story.

Where to look next

The map shows Guyana, the directory lists everyone on the record and method lists the sources. Other countries that gave up a wealth tax are Sweden, Denmark and France.

Timeline

1962 The Kaldor budget, drawn up for Premier Cheddi Jagan, brings in an annual property tax, a capital gains tax and a gift tax. Riots follow on 16 February.
2025 President Irfaan Ali announces that the tax on individuals will go. On 22 December Christopher Ram answers in the press that it needs reform, not abolition.
2026 Budget day, 26 January. The Finance Minister proposes to remove the net property tax on individuals.
2026 The National Assembly passes the Fiscal Enactments (Amendment) Bill in the early hours of 14 February. It applies from the year of income starting 1 January 2025.
2026 The Ministry of Finance reports that net property tax collections fell by GYD 717.7 million in the first half of the year.

Sources

The 1 supporters in Guyana