The Department of Local Government will investigate Queanbeyan Council’s decision to backdate rate charges and slug small business owners amounts ranging from $10,000 to $90,000.
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Member for Monaro and former Queanbeyan councillor John Barilaro says the charges are unfair.
Ratepayers threatened legal action when they received their rate notices accompanied by bills for backdated charges.
Overall outstanding rates following an audit back to the 2009/10 financial year uncovered $3.7 million worth of outstanding charges. Business owners have had to repay the most rates, including one amount of $93,000 for undercharging.
The council says it will refund more than $260,000 to ratepayers who were overcharged. The maximum refund is $61,000 and most refunds apply to multi-unit dwellings.
Council says under the Local Government Act it has to recover the charges and issue the refunds.
Yet in a statement last week the council said it could have gone back further than the five years its audit covered, but elected to limit its investigations.
The audit was sparked when the council discovered a mistake in its property database.
Mr Barilaro said he was disappointed the council expected ratepayers to pay for the error after admitting fault.
“The issued supplementary notices should cancelled by council immediately,” he said.
Mr Barilaro is seeking urgent advice from the Department of Local Government and the Local Government Minister to establish whether the council’s actions are consistent with the Local Government Act.
“If council have been unable to accurately invoice their rates, they should have to face the financial consequences of that error and only apply new rate levels in future quarters,” said Mr Barilaro.
“As for the ratepayers who were overcharged, they should be refunded this amount from council or given a credit on future rates. The burden should be on Council to rectify their mistake.
“Council have indicated that they will not be pursuing previous owners who were undercharged during their period of ownership, given that they have made an exception on this front, surely other exceptions are permitted under the legislation and should be made. ‘’
Small businesses felt the backdated charges were unfair because they could not backdate their bills to their customers to recover money, a sentiment shared by their local MP.
Mr Barilaro said before entering politics he had run a timber business in Queanbeyan.
“If I had incorrectly undercharged our customers for a product, that would have been my error and it would be unthinkable to retrospectively hit a customer with a supplementary invoice,” he said.
