Rates and the Property Manager — Part I

Abstract

It is essential to any understanding of rates and the problem they pose to appreciate the essential nature of the tax. It is first of all a local tax and as such is the main independent source of income for our democratically elected local authorities. It is not, as some people seem to assume, a direct payment for services, but is essentially a way of distributing between the more permanent community within a local authority area a share of the communal costs of providing local government services. It is thus essentially a tax on occupiers using as its yardstick the annual value of the property they respectively occupy. It operates on the philosophy that land and property being immovable (and owners and occupiers not) the annual or rental value of the properties within an area is the most convenient common yardstick by which ability to contribute to the common local purse can be assessed.

Citation

Bassett FRICS PPRVA, J.C. (1983), "Rates and the Property Manager — Part I", Property Management, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 20-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb006543