Bins and rates

Published on 23 March 2023

Kiama Council is aware of a segment aired this week on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair regarding some residents’ rates charges in relation to their waste services.

We provide an award-winning waste service to residents and ratepayers across our municipality.

Payment for this service is included on our annual rates and charges notice. Like any bill or bank statement, the onus is on the customer to check their documentation and notify the issuing authority of any discrepancies.

We are sorry that the regrettable situation at this particular ratepayer address has arisen and that the error in this customer’s bin service was not picked up earlier.

When this matter was brought to our attention, Kiama Council acted quickly to rectify the situation, in accordance with the law.

We refunded the amounts of $805.72 for 2021-22 and $818.61 for 2022-23.

The Office of Local Government has advised that, where charges go back more than 1 year, the Recovery of Imposts Tax Act 1963 section 2.1(b) applies, stating that recovery of taxes (rates) cannot be made after the expiration of twelve months after the date of payment.

https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-1963-021#sec.2

In addition, Kiama Council is now working on an audit of all our urban and residential waste services to ensure our charges are correct.

At this stage, our review of actual bins (waste services) versus bins charged (via rates) has shown an anomaly rate of just 1.6% across our 9,900 residential services. The 1.6% contains both undercharges and overcharges. We are continuing to investigate this matter.

Council reminds all our ratepayers to check their bills and if anything is unclear, please get in touch with us to discuss, we are always happy to help.