LIABILITY FOR RATES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27064, 12 June 1953, Page 10

LIABILITY FOR RATES

GOVERNMENT OWNED HOUSES COUNTIES TO ASK FOR PAYMENT (New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, June 11. Representations that occupied Gov-ernment-owned houses should be liable for all rates will be made to the Government by the New Zealand Counties’ Association, which at its annual conference today adopted a Paparua remit to this effect. “In my county there are 140 houses on which not one penny in rates is paid,” said Mr A. Kelly, clerk of the Paparua County. “There are as many as 250 more such houses under development, almost all in county residential districts.”

There were houses occupied by the staff and families of an air centre, staff nouses at a prison establishment, transit houses owned by the Ministry ox Works, a Labour department hostel, State Hydro-electric Department nousing, and an air depot with stall houses and others under construction.

“Is there any justification lor the occupiers of these houses contributing nothing whatsoever towards the. rates of the local bodies, not a penny to the county council, the hospital board, the catcnment board, the transport board,” asked Mr Kelly. “The families of tnese houses pay a rent. Should not the owners ox these houses pay rates in exactly the same manner as State nousing? The Government servant is not exempt from income tax. Why should he be exempt from rates, or pay less in rent because of such exemption. merely because he occupies a departmental house?” It was a most serious anomaly in the incidence of rating, said Mr Kelly, and an unfair distribution of the cost oi local government. The Counties* Association had from time to time made representations to the Government for the payment of rates on all Government-owned properties, he said. “These representations have’not as vet met with success, but my council feels that one important aspect of the position is not fully appreciated by the authorities, lhat is the non-payment of rates on houses owned by Government departments and occupied ■by Government employees under the guise of a ‘service tenancy.’ ”