Bill Provides For Rate Instalments

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32301, 20 May 1970, Page 30

Bill Provides For Rate Instalments

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 19.

Payment of rates by instalments is authorised by the Rating Amendment Bill introduced in Parliament today.

The bill was given its first and second reading pro forma and referred to the Local Bills Committee.

In introducing the bill the Minister of Local Government (Mr Seath) said that whether the instalment system of paying rates was adopted was entirely a matter for the rating authority.

The bill had been discussed with both the Municipal and Counties Associations, he said.

Two clauses of the bill are complementary to the Valuation of Land Amendment Bill, also introduced today, and provide for the collection of rates on the basis of a special rateable value where residential or ‘ rural properties are in land zoned industrial or commercial.

Where local authorities decide that rates should be collected by instalments, the bill provides for up to six instalments each year.

;pay the whole of his rates for any one year in advance in a lump sum if he wishes to do so, even if the rating authority decides on instalment payment of rates. Because instalments will be paid in advance, they will be assessed as a proportion of the total rates payable in the previous rating year. Any i additional amount owing I after the collection of installments will be spread among instalments paid in the following year. Clause 20 of the bill repeals the necessity for “undue hardship” to be proved before a rating authority ean remit the mandatory 10 per cent penalty on overdue rate payments. Where rates are collected by instalment, the local authority will now be able to use jits discretion on whether to 'charge the 10 per cent penalty The bill was criticised by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) for not removing from the act the “odious ini spection clause” associated with the postponement of rates.

But Mr Seath said that rate postponement would be removed in favour of the new

system of special rateable values where special circumstances applied. Mr S. A. Whitehead (Lab., Nelson) said that what was required in rate legislation was something which reduced the heavy burden of rates. Mr Seath assured Mr J. L. Hunt (Lab., New Lynn) that provisions of the bill allowing local authorities to charge a fair and reasonable fee for water and sanitation services provided to schools, hospitals and universities, were “machinery clauses” and did not alter the present order of

A ratepayer is entitled to