Relief for eThekwini ratepayers

Presenting the draft budget to the city's Executive Committee this week, City Manager Michael Sutcliffe said there was no reason for residents to worry as plans were in place to ensure they were not going to be hard hit by the new rates policy.

Property rates bill

The Property Rates Bill, which is set to regulate the power of municipalities to impose rates on properties, was passed by Parliament's National Assembly in 2004.

The Bill is set to bring about a new property rates system and allows municipalities to extend the levying of rates to properties that have been partially or completely excluded from rates.

These include public entities, farmers, religious, welfare and charity organisations, independent schools and conservation bodies.

Owners are not liable for rates if their properties are less than R15,000 in value.

Sutcliffe also announced that besides being exempt from paying taxes on the first R120,000 of their properties, the vulnerable would also be protected from high rates.

Pensioners pay even less

Pensioners, child-headed households, disabled persons and the medically boarded will get a further exemption of R280,000.

This means that pensioners with properties valued at R400,000 or less would not pay any rates.

Sutcliffe further announced that residential property owners in the city will pay a rates randage of R0.009 cents to the Rand and that there would be a tariff increase of 9.9% in rates.

“At the time of releasing the new valuation roll, we could not release the proposed randages as the budget was still being prepared,” Sutcliffe said.

The fears among the public were largely owing to uncertainties due to the new Market Valuation on Property Rates (MPRA) that brought about an average increase in residential property values of 378%.

Applauding the rates relief for pensioners, the disabled and child-headed households, Mayor Obed Mlaba said most pensioners in both townships and suburbs were concerned that they were not being adequately catered for.

“Now I am sure that those concerns have been addressed,” he said.

Vacant land-owners hit hard

However he said people with vacant land might be the hardest hit under the new rate randage to encourage development.

“The randage is much higher for people who own land but have not developed it,” he said.

The rate randage for other properties include commercial and business 0.0179c to the Rand, industrial 0.023c to the Rand, vacant land 0.357c to the Rand and agricultural is 0.0023c to the Rand.

Ratepayers have until 31 March to object and should they still be dissatisfied with the outcome of the objection they have the recourse to appeal.

Each to their own

During the passing of the Bill, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government Yunus Carrim said the Bill did not prescribe that property rates be levied on traditional authority areas.

"Each municipality must decide itself on this, but it may be difficult to levy property rates on communal areas unless it is registered in the name of an individual," he said.

Carrim explained that owners were not liable for rates if properties were less than R15,000 in value.

Land reform beneficiaries are also excluded from property rates for ten years, after which municipalities must phase in rates over three years.

"The new property rates system has to be phased in appropriately in consultation with a range of stakeholders," said Carrim at the time.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews