Rates Bill jitters

Critics of the bill are being "overly alarmist", Yunus Carrim says in a Business Day report entitled Government tries to allay rates bill jitters. The market value of the land and buildings must be taken into account when valuing a property, but there must be no automatic exclusion of rural land being valued and property rates being applied.

Carrim says the bill has provisions that act against the imposition of unduly high rates. These include the ability of the Provincial and Local Government Minister, in concurrence with the Minister of Finance, to limit rates increases for municipalities. The Committee has also asked the provincial and local government department to provide a study projecting the effect of moving from a land-only valuation to a land-and-improvements valuation.

As was noted in a previous article - see Related articles - national government can intervene if local authorities tax property owners so unreasonably that it affects national economic policies.

Full report in Business Day