5 August 2009

Land tax debacle costs $200,000 in lost interest alone

| johnboy
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In the the Canberra Times even Treasurer Katy Gallagher is admitting she presides over incompetent muppets.

At issue is the ongoing debacle of land tax whereby whatever overpriced and rubber band powered computer system purchased from latter day carnival folk that calculates and levies the land tax in this town ran out of electrons with which to add new houses to the system.

So with some houses having paid no tax in 16 months the ACT Government is trying to shake down the home-owners for a cumulative back payment of $11 million. Bad enough even if we get the money back, but there’s $200,000 in lost interest to be considered.

They’ll need a new speed camera to pay for that.

    Treasurer Katy Gallagher said the ACT, which faces deficits of $770million over the next four years, could not afford to lose the money.

    ”I know this isn’t great to criticise your department but I’ve certainly felt that it had taken too long to address and, in pretty clear terms, I demanded that the problem be fixed.

    ”I’ve been made aware of it in the first quarter of this year so I’ve been probably watching it for six months,” Ms Gallagher said.

They’ve managed to get another 1,200 accounts into the system, just 800 to go.

UPDATED: Brendan Smyth is having a predictable huff on the issue.

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VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy5:06 pm 05 Aug 09

So I guess noone wants to hear that while living in NSW I deliberately pay my ACT investment property land tax at the last possible second…

I hope you are right OzChick! But… Sceptical me thinks they will try and play catch up the following year instead!

bergamot said :

Great, so our rates are going to go up again by how much?

As per the current years ACT budget, ACT rates are not going up anymore than the usual.
I don’t think that the unimproved values of properties have gone up substantially in the last financial year. There doesn’t seem to be any new taxes like lasts years introduction of the Fire and Emergency Services Levy. Although, I could be wrong.

Great, so our rates are going to go up again by how much?

There was a post recently which referred to the “semi-competent” ACT Public Service. At the time I thought that was being kind. This just confirms it.

Any half competent managers would have been all over this sort of thing from day one of learning of it, and driven it hard to fix it.

No performance pay for the execs and managers in the land tax section of ACT Treasury this year I’d expect (if they operated in the real world – but somehow in the parallel universe of ACT Government I suspect that won’t happen)

So, she’s a Treasurer watching a budget deficit, watching a data management and business processing problem expand that deficit through diminishing incomes, and then goes to the media looking like 1) she hasn’t done anything about it that she’s willing to talk about (ie: doesn’t look like she’s addressed problems beyond a ‘just take my word for it’) and just looks like she’s simply hoping the problems fix themselves.

And ‘starting 16 months’ ago puts it in Stanhope’s watch as Treasurer.

Why blame Katy alone. Wasn’t Jon still treasurer when this all started?

Clown Killer9:27 am 05 Aug 09

Is it really any surprise that wherever there’s an incompetent fcuk up in the ACT Katy Gallagher is not far away?

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