Council currently has an issue with a ratepayer who purchased two rural adjoining lots in early 2013 on two separate occasions and was therefore issued with two notices of valuations and two rate notices. Upon receiving the rate notices and realising he would be paying almost double the rates (bases) than if it were valued as one entity has applied for consolidation/ aggregation of the land and has now received one value. Council have advised him that the current two assessments will remain for the financial year (13/14) and the single assessment for the lots under the new valuation will become effective from 1/7/2014 (normal Council practice), he is adamant that the base date is when the value is effective from not the date they were actually valued. Any help I could get in addressing his following argument would be very much appreciated, including where in the Valuation of Land or LG Act it discusses this:
1. All three valuations state that they are the land value as at 1 July 2011.
2. Section 548A of the Local Government Act states that council “… may aggregate the land values …”.
3. I cannot find any sections in the Local Government Act or the Valuation of Land Act that supports HSC’s position that council is required to rate them separately and that the third valuation is not applicable to the current financial year.
4. In my opinion the third valuation supersedes the first two valuations, and that was its intended purpose as advised by HSC.
5. HSC is not losing any revenue as the two lots in question have simply been “transferred” from one aggregation to another. Before I purchased the lots there were two “base rates” and now there are still two “base rates”,
6. The 2013-14 rates should be recalculated on the basis of the third valuation.
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